

V 



fp : A v : 

%/*,>•/ t . o %-^y /' 

> a 9 * v °' c* V s 

t ^ aTV V* <3 54 * **> . V 

•<?’, o 

* <A> ,'V 

z ^ V 



•<?■ . •■> 

t > 

c S ' <0’ <” J 0 a i * A 

. 0 ^ , «■ v ' * * '<? A V t 0 N c 

C, . s -f ^ <* 

* - ^ v? .' 

*V : x° o« * 

r * J) 

o 0 



°* <£f a 



d> 

* O-. ,0- x* ', *% . .# 

^ ^ \ \ 

V = 


* jt>^, VI 
- • •>> * * 
/ 



* ‘ r *2W l * * >V ^ 

b, '•*,,,.' «,* *• 

8 , V s * * » • 

GV V s ^ 

^ <1 A> 

** - ' ^ 

A \ * <* 

<4 

* 



fl A. V 

, * O.0 


\ 0 ^, 




A' % : , vw . 

rj^ 

O ' I t s 

4\ N (. ^/* 


^ >'■, V* *• 

u. x , o 

C s> ^JSjsTVMVAi ✓ 


,; o 0^ 


0 \ -- ^ 

, V X. a\ X C^ N 

^ ^ v ■ r %/ 

fy o $ <£ y & 

„ *. * oV >, ’ . *'\ c . y * A 

* * ~ " r ^ £M a: ° % ^ ’ " 






>/ j . 
^ " vV 


2 




» ^ y ' v ' 


' < & ' .,, <U y °* ‘ 

o° ' ' LL*i J 

" ""**• * ^ ^ 



■\ 

A, s 

■D *' 

\ - 0 

N O' '/> 

y c 

* 

v O. 

H. -V V 


* flu> 

ist$L ^ 



<$%. y'jM 


^ ' ' V, 'V, 

<y y 0 » \ 




■fit 



\ 1 h j, v 

^ ^ V 

i> = x" °x. 



bv ^ ^ 



aV‘ <P^ 


> * 


< 

i 0 N ^ * 


\ 


d* 

* 

O 

*/ 


r> 

s 



' / 



\> . 

^ * 

V 

</> 

if* 


o 

m 

c 

>> 


o 



o 

k# ^ 
^ \ 


1<> 

u? 


V. 


^ .0 N o <* 

<y ^ * * o 
A* 


v 1 


i-\ 2 V^ 


\ N 


rf- 

C- A- 

, ^ * 8 . ' ° 

'\ C‘ V ** 


ni^ 

o 


'V V* 




: ^ 

x 00 ^. 

» mi 


V \ , 


r> ✓ 


vV 


<?V v\. 

° ^ V ; 

A> o 

V? *5* 


<• ,V. 

'</>* a\V 

vP «\ % 


s V s0 X 4> 

_> - V ‘ ft z, v. 

r0' x" ^ 

/a -c 4 A 


* A % \ 

d* * 




c'“l ' " ' cV .' 1 * ■> Vf 


0 




' 0 , X * \ A K , O, 

a\ . o N C- */* 

* O 

-JO * ^ 

++ $ ;»■’»• 







* 77 '?' .-s.^ 

0 r~ ^ ' ’ * s' ' ^d- ' ' ’S'- r 6 

A 0 ° , * » I v * \^ V s « « „ ^ * 9 N 0 ^ ,0‘ 

V V S S 





V </> 

X x '% * 

a ‘ *o, '*7* 

vi> t » N ' « * ■*& * * 

t> $. - X- # 



s . . , V'* »T» ’' * 0 ' , . . % *•».,, 

^ s ' /, s iV * ^ O. 

•^. * v :&&Az ++*# 




*+ 



^ « V 

^-, * » M 0 5 J 


0 k * 


. ° * ■*■ a\ o N .C ' V .: 

[ A^ ^ 

- ^ V ® < 

: x° ^ 



+ -Q C* •<. ^ 

<: - y o o x ^ < A o * 

° * a\ -Nr: 

<* o 
✓ 


r 

f*cy?{ * 


SPSa ^ 

v ! ! I 'jffi 'n s 



o ^ , 

v #' 
v v 4 



o 7? 7^. 

>7 * * V 7' 

° Nc * HL'"’ r o" s * vlfl * ^ 

0 *' 





<3^ 'V 

,7 % V*- 1 ^ 5 ”.' 0 o 

\ v s . , , '<-. * •> N 0 n > 

■ '^77 - 

° ' / > .7 e JOSHES. ' •%. 


,7 ^ 

sV .>> * 

r> > 

' 0 * v * ^ N 

t. ,/ °:.. t «, 7 

4< .' 

: -v 






THE TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


I 






THE TAMING OF 
JOHN BLUNT 

BY 

ALFRED OLLIVANT J 

l» 

AUTHOR OF 

“BOB, SON OF BATTLE,” “THE GENTLEMAN,” ETC. 



Garden City New York 
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
1911 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 

COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 


• » 
1 »• 


©CI.A300181^ 


TO 

THE FUTURE 




. 


\ 




CONTENTS 


PAGE 

The Making of the Hollow .... 3 

BOOK I. THE LONE MAN 

CHAPTER 

I. His Den ..... 11 

II. The Northern Mail . . .17 

III. The Slow Train .... 25 

IV. Wart Cottage .... 33 

V. John Blunt Sees a Light . . 38 

VI. The Old Brown Man ... 42 

VII. The Village of Scar ... 49 

BOOK II. THE COMING OF THE WOMAN 

VIII. John Blunt Writes Home . . 57 

IX. John Blunt Goes to Church . . 64 

X. The Old Man Who Ended in Himself 75 

XI. The Sand-hills .... 84 

XII. The Sand-hills .... 91 

XIII. The Sand-hills .... 98 

XIV. Rachel’s Song .... 103 

BOOK III. WAR OF WILLS 

XV. The Ladies at the Hall . . .111 

XVI. John Blunt Turns His Back . .122 


VI 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 


PAGE 

XVII. 

The Rogue Man . 

. 125 

XVIII. 

John Blunt Conquers 

. 133 

XIX. 

The Way of Rachel Carmelite 

. 138 

XX. 

Old Tom-horse 

. 144 

XXI. 

A Button Comes Off 

. 149 


BOOK IV. THE OTHER MAN 


XXII. 

Lady Florence Writes a Note . 

155 

XXIII. 

Lord Hillyard .... 

160 

XXIV. 

Bobo and Baba .... 

169 

XXV. 

The Coming of the Guardsman 

175 

XXVI. 

Major Dalbignac, D. S. 0. 

182 

XXVII. 

The Unspeakable .... 

187 

xxvm. 

A Soul Speaks .... 

194 

XXIX. 

John Blunt on Csesarean Socialism . 

201 

XXX. 

John Blunt Sees, Unseen 

208 

XXXI. 

John Blunt Wavers 

212 

XXXH. 

The Spirit of Resistance Flaps its 



Wings ..... 

219 

XXXIII. 

John Blunt Pauses - 

226 

XXXIV. 

John Blunt Makes Up His Mind. 

230 


BOOK V. THE CLASH OF MALES 


XXXV. 

Two Men and a Woman 

. 

. 239 

XXXVI. 

Lady Florence is Afraid . 

. 

. 252 

XXXVII. 

Under the Scaur . 

. 

. 265 

XXXVIII. 

John Blunt Forgets 

. 

. 271 



CONTENTS 

vii 

CHAPTER 


PAGE 

XXXIX. 

John Blunt, Schoolboy . 

. m 

XL. 

John Blunt Bows His Head 

. 285 

XLI. 

The Last of Lady Rachel 

. 290 


BOOK VI 

THE RETURN OF THE WOMAN 

XLII. 

The Autumn Lady 

301 

XLIII. 

A Conversion .... 

310 

XLIV. 

Lord Hillyard Comes Round . 

316 

XLV. 

Majuba Once More 

319 

XLVI. 

Harry Reports .... 

327 

XL VII. 

Lord Hillyard Plays the Good 



Samaritan .... 

335 

XL VIII. 

Two Women .... 

342 

XLIX. 

John Blunt at the Hall . 

351 

L. 

Rachel Comes Home 

358 

LI. 

The Last of the Autumn Lady 

364 

The Filling of the Hollow .... 

373 















THE MAKING OF THE HOLLOW 






THE MAKING OF THE HOLLOW 


John Blunt sat on his mother’s bed as he had sat 
since dawn. 

Every now and then he patted the ringless hand that 
lay in his; and each time he did so, infirm old fingers 
closed feebly about his, and a quavering voice from the 
bed said: 

“Dear boy.” 

The boy was fifty odd, gray, and bearded. 

He sat on the bed with rounded back, his face to the 
open window, and gray eyes staring gravely on the syca- 
more swirling green against the blue in the vicar’s garden 
opposite. 

A tramp passed in the road, cawing desolately, 

“Sun of me So-ul, Thou Syviour dear.” 

The sycamore in the vicar’s garden turned its back 
to the wind. From the road there came the swish of 
bicycles, and a boy’s sharp round voice, scolding, “You 
little ass, Mabel!” and a girl’s laughing reply, “Well, I 
couldn’t help it, silly.” 

Then a muffled motor drew up outside with groans. 

A minute later and a loose board in the passage sounded 
to the hushed tread of a man’s feet. There came a low 
knock at the door, and the handle was tried. 

A quiet voice without said : 

3 


4 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“I’m the doctor.” 

Mother and son smiled at each other with their eyes 
— the same somewhat mischievous and understanding 
smile. 

Neither spoke or stirred. 

The quiet voice outside said : 

“All right. I’ll come again later,” and the loose board 
sounded once more. 

John Blunt nodded his shaggy gray head and nodded 
it. 

The far-off eyes in the little crumpled face on the pil- 
low dwelt mistily upon him. 

“I don’t like leaving you alone, John,” said the qua- 
vering voice. 

John Blunt raised the hand in his and kissed it; and the 
frill fell away from the thin wrist of the dying woman 
as he did so. 

A lovely light welled up in her receding eyes. Then 
the dark eyelids closed; and the hollows of eyes and tem- 
ples and cheeks deepened, the shadow gathering in them 
as in coomb es at sunset. 

John Blunt bent over his mother. 

There was a growing darkness about the little shrivelled 
face upon the pillow, and the great bearded breathing 
one with the living eyes brooding over it seemed to re- 
flect that darkness. 

The likeness between mother and son was strangely 
manifest in difference. 

Gray waves came and went in the crinkled face that 
seemed so small and always growing smaller. There 
now was twilight and the glimmer of dark waters, trou- 


THE MAKING OF THE HOLLOW 


5 


bled and stirring, as the tide went down and the last pools 
of life emptied themselves through rocks into the Sea, 
the Sea. 

Once the dying woman’s lips parted. 

John Blunt dipped his little finger in a tumbler of 
water and wetted the inside of his mother’s lips. 

The dying woman shivered, and her son pulled the 
clothes about the little brown face and kissed it. 

The other nodded and smiled, her eyes still shut. 

The son was kneeling by the bedside now, his face still, 
and eyes steady on the face beneath him. 

“Mother,” he said. 

The dark eyelids opened. There was a ruffling of the 
fine wrinkles about the eyes and mouth as when wind 
breathes on water, blurring it. Far away, in the misty 
darkness, twin stars twinkled wistfully, beckoning, al- 
ways beckoning. 

The eyelids closed on them and opened again; but the 
twin stars had set for ever. . . . 

John Blunt closed the eyelids of his dead. 

Then he rose and walked up and down the room with 
his mouth open and downward eyes, swinging his arms. 

Above the mantel-piece was an image of the crucified 
Saviour; upon the wall the text: 

“Be Thou Faithful Unto Death, and I Will Give Thee a 
Crown of Life.” 

A Bible, the “Imitation,” and Miss Sewell’s “Night 
Thoughts” reposed on a chest of drawers. 

On the walls were one or two chalks of a bygone gener- 


6 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

ation, old ladies in quaint mob caps, and gentlemen in 
chokers. 

And here and there and everywhere, photographs of a 
baby, a chubby child, a boy in flannels with a cricket bat, 
a youth with a downy moustache, and a bearded man — 
the same soul always looming through the changing flesh. 

It was such a room as thousands of English ladies have 
lived and died in. 

To John Blunt it had been familiar from childhood; 
and now the woman who had been the light of it for all 
these years lay strangely still upon the bed. 

Her child paraded up and down the room with eyes 
that saw nothing, unspeaking and unspoken to. 

His breath came and went in huge sighs like a wind 
soughing in a cavern. 

The old maid outside the door heard him and whim- 
pered for admittance. 

“Let me in till ye, Maaster John.” 

For all answer John Blunt walked out on to the 
balcony. 

A mile away, beyond houses and trees, flashed the sea. 

He gazed at it sternly and with folded arms, drawing 
a huge, uplifting breath. 

Then he held up his hand as one who sees a signal 
and understands and answers it. 

The ruddy vicar, issuing from his gate, saw the great 
man standing in the balcony, the wind lifting his gray 
touzled hair, and his hand raised. After a moment’s 
hesitation he crossed the road. 

“How is Mrs. Blunt?” he asked somewhat timidly. 

John Blunt’s brows gathered gloomily. 


THE MAKING OF THE HOLLOW 


7 


“She’s all right,” he said in a deep, curt voice. 

The vicar raised a finger and passed on swiftly with 
straight back and erect head. 

John Blunt returned to the bedside. 

He looked down grave-eyed on his mother’s face, still and 
gray beneath him, the thin hair breaking white about the 
temples and wisped up on the top in a tight little bunch. 

A strangely beautiful smile stole over his rough and 
shaggy face as he gazed. 

“Dear little woman,” he whispered, and laid his hand 
upon the other’s forehead. 

It seemed to strike him that she was cold, for he tucked 
the hand he had held so long in his within the sheets, 
pulled the clothes up to the chin, and threw a rug upon the 
bed; and he did it with the tenderness of a child still 
young enough seriously to nurse a doll, yet old enough 
to realize, if somewhat wistfully, that there is humour 
in her seriousness. 

The sunlight splashed the floor. 

John Blunt gave a heave to the bed and swung the head 
of it across the room that the sun might fall upon his 
mother’s face, no longer crumpled and troubled by the 
stress of its ebbing mortality, but calm and beautiful 
as Earth. 

Then he wrapped her round in blankets, this wisp of an 
old woman, who once had been himself, and flinging him- 
self upon the bed took her in his arms, and kissed her 
cold forehead passionately. 

A butcher’s boy, whistling an air from “The Merry 
Widow,” as he wheeled laboriously by on his bicycle in 
the street below, roused him at length. 


8 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


He rose and sat on the bedside with tumbled hair, 
looking somehow curiously boy-like in spite of his gray 
beard: then left the room, turning the key behind him. 

In the passage an old maid lolled against the door and 
whimpered. 

On seeing him, she tottered down the passage, a 
broken dish in her hand. 

“Oh, Maaster John!” she cried, placed a hand upon his 
shoulder, and lifted her old eyes to his. 

John Blunt took her in his arms and kissed her. 

“Do you want to see her?” he asked. 

“Do I not?” resentfully. “The Mis’tus.” 

He unlocked the door. 

The old maid entered eagerly, her broken dish in her 
hand. 

“She aye likit me to tell her, ” she whimpered, tottering 
across the room. 

Then she saw the little figure rolled in blankets on the 
bed, and flung up her hands. 

“Eh, the queer lad it is!” she cried. “He’s made like 
a mummy of her,” and went to work with rheumatism- 
wrung hands to set the bed in order. 

John Blunt watched her from the door. 

“Don’t pull down the blinds,” he said, “and keep the 
windows open.” 

“So be it,” sobbed the old maid, now on her knees, 
and dabbing kisses on the forehead of her dead mistress. 
“I don’t know what the neebors wull be saying.” 

“Damn the neighbours, Martha,” said John Blunt 
quietly, and passed on gray-headed down the passage with 
a hollow in his heart. 


BOOK I 


THE LONE MAN 




I 


HIS DEN 

The postman was at the door and John Blunt took 
the letters in himself. 

Then he turned into his study. 

It was a small room looking larger than it was by reason 
of its bareness. There were no curtains to the window; 
and a moth-eaten panther’s skin cast on the bare boards 
was all the carpet. In one corner was an ice axe, a coil 
of rope, and a climber’s pick; in another a sporting rifle, 
somewhat rusty. A few heads hung upon the wall, 
a bison’s horns, an assegai, a Zulu shield, and one or 
two native ornaments, anklets, strings of beads, and 
the like. 

On the chimney-piece was the faded photograph 
of a man in a veldt hat, a cartridge belt slung across 
his shirt, standing above the body of a mighty- 
maned lion; and across it was written the name of the 
greatest of South African hunters. Beside the photo- 
graph was a bronze statuette of an athlete, naked and 
glorious. 

Pinned on the wall above, side by side, were two cheap 
coloured prints — one of the sun rising on the Alps, the 
other of the sea of roofs and factory chimneys of a dingy 
manufacturing town. Somebody had linked the two 


12 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


together with a strip of paper on which was written 
in a shaky old hand the word, 

One. 

On the floor against the wall leaned a coloured poster 
entitled : 

The Disease of Destitution. 

Why Not Prevent It ? 

It was a study of the Thames embankment at dawn, 
the light growing ghastly on the wan faces of the out- 
casts gathered there, and the gaunt factories and chim- 
neys rising Golgotha-like in the livid dusk beyond the 
shining reaches of the river. Three huddled and deso- 
late figures on whom the light of day breaks, bringing no 
hope with it: a workingman, a governess, her child: the 
crowded out of our civilization, our weakest, our waste, 
those for whom we are responsible to Christ — the woman, 
haunted, wan-cheeked, and wearing a scarlet jacket, 
prophetic of the shame to which her need will surely drive 
her; the round-cheeked child, a glory still lingering about 
her brow, sleeping against her mother’s shoulder; and a 
dark old daddy bowed about his knees. Behind them, 
the gleam of the water where the woman at least will 
ultimately find a home the land refused to give her; 
and across the river, the sombre and sepulchral array of 
the greatest city on God’s earth. 

Two rough planks nailed against the wall supported 
a miscellaneous collection of books on South African 
hunting and exploration, economics, swimming, sociology, 
climbing, and the housing question. Selous and Charles 
Booth jostled together; Stanley and Sherwell and 


HIS DEN 


13 


Rowntree lay cheek by jowl; Sidney Webb leaned confi- 
dentially against Whymper; while Edward Carpen- 
ter and a volume of the Badminton Library propped 
each other. 

On a plain kitchen table, strewn with papers and books, 
was a typewriter. The Minority Report of the Poor 
Law Commission lay upon the floor amid a litter of 
Fabian tracts. In one corner was a stack of Blue Books 
and, in another, a file of the great radical daily, the 
Morning Chronicle . 

John Blunt opened his mother’s letters. One, 
a bill, he filed. The others were letters of inquiry, 
sentimental and sympathetic ; all from women, 
nieces, remote cousins, and acquaintances, who had 
barely known the dead woman but whose Chris- 
tian duty it was to pretend to an emotion they could 
not feel. 

He tore them across, his gray eyes grim, and big mouth 
gripping, and, crossing the room, chucked the torn frag- 
ments into a waste-paper basket. 

Then he sat down, and the Spirit of Resistance 
that had crept into his face faded out of it. A soft 
and beautiful expression stole into his eyes as he took 
up his pen and wrote to his mother’s only familiar 
friend : 

Dear Auntie Lal: 

After my note yesterday you will know what my news to- 
day is. Mother passed away quietly an hour ago. She was 
conscious to the last. It is the end of a very beautiful life — an 
end which I know you think with her is only a Beginning. I 
hope you may be right. Indeed, writing at this moment, within 


14 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT T 


a few minutes of closing her eyes, I think I can say quite sin- 
cerely for the first time in my life that I know that you are right. 
Mother is not dead to me, and never will be. 

Your affectionate nephew, 

By deed of adoption, 
John Blunt. 

He went to the window and looked out with eyes that 
were beautifully tender. 

Then he sat down before his typewriter. 

A great silver-gray cat snowed upon with flakes of 
paper emerged crackling from the waste- paper basket and 
leaped lightly to his shoulder. 

“Hullo, Abe, old man,” murmured John Blunt, deep 
in his letters. “You’ll have Martha after you, if you 
make up to me.” 

All but one of his letters followed his mother’s into the 
waste-paper basket. 

That one was a memo, from the editor of the Morning 
Chronicle and ran: 

Can you let me have the first article by Saturday a week? 
We begin with the Frensham Estate to-morrow. Jonson has 
done it after all. I saw Lloyd- Jones last night for a minute 
in the House before the debate. He thinks he’ll pull the 
Land clauses through with the help of our Commission. 

J. P. H. 

Grieved to read your news in last night’s Westminster. 

John Blunt scribbled on a post-card: 

I start to-morrow. Two o’clock train Euston. What’s 
the woman’s name and any particulars? J. B. 

Please insert in proper place: 

Blunt: Margaret, widow of the late Thomas Henry Blunt. 


HIS DEN 15 

and only daughter of Geoffrey Fossbrooke of Fossbrooke. 
Age 79. Funeral 

He looked up at the calendar opposite, and saw it was 
the 17th of August. 

Friday 18th inst. No inquiries by request. 

I’ll owe you the 2 / 6. 

Down the street three unemployed workingmen 
marched doggedly chanting: 

Keep your lower lights a-burning. 

Sitting where he was John Blunt could just see the bobs 
of their brown caps as they passed in the road beneath. 

He crossed to the window and followed them thought- 
fully down the street with his eyes. 

Then he went out; and Abe Lincoln trotted at his heels 
with tail erect till he came to the lamp post, when he 
turned and trotted back. 

At the corner John Blunt passed the chanting three. 

One of them begged of the great gray-bearded man 
striding by. 

He shook his head and marched on. 

The man behind him swore. 

John Blunt threw his beard across his shoulder. 

“That don’t help much,” he called, striding always on. 

“ ’Elps more’n you do, ye — old blighter, ” muttered 
the man, a sudden flare in his eyes. 

John Blunt marched away, a grimness about his jaws. 

Outside the church he saw the ruddy vicar and crossed 
to him swiftly. 

“Can you bury my mother to-morrow at ten-thirty 
sharp?” he asked harshly. 


16 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


The vicar gave a little peck forward. His eyes flut- 
tered; his mouth and face wrought; he seemed to be 
struggling to suppress a live volcano within. Then he 
swallowed and resumed himself. 

“Your mother at ten-thirty sharp,” he said a little 
tremulously. “Well, really, Mr. Blunt. . . . No, 

I’m afraid I can’t. . . . I’ve a Diocesan meeting 

at eleven.” 

“Thank ye,” said John Blunt. “Good day,” and 
strode on. 

The vicar tumbled back into the porch and sat down. 
There he took off his hat and tossed to and fro with tight- 
screwed eyes, stamping with his feet. 

A gang of navvies, picking up the road, stopped work 
to watch him, nudging each other. 

“Beery,” said one. “Wish I were,” and swung his 
pick with a sympathetic grin. 

John Blunt marched down the street. 

At the gates of the Institute, he met the Presbyterian 
minister, tall and top-hatted, and to him put the same 
question he had put to the vicar. 

To-morrow at ten -thirty ! Yes, Mr. Henderson thought 
he could. Yes, certainly. Yes — with pleasure. He 
meant to say . He was sure Mr. Blunt would under- 

stand. At the same time (drawing closer and dropping his 
voice), with all respect he should like to say as a brother- 
man, and he hoped he might add a brother-Christian (cock- 
ing a dubious eye at the other), how greatly grieved 

“Etc.,” said John Blunt. “Quite so. Meet you at 
the cemetery at ten-thirty sharp,” and he turned in to 
an undertaker’s. 


II 


THE NORTHERN MAIL 

John Blunt emerged from the great entrance hall of 
Euston on to the platform with sombre eyes and stern 
plodding feet. 

He wore an old gray suit, the knickerbockers very baggy 
and simply buckled beneath the knee. A camera was 
slung across his shoulders, a knapsack in one hand, and 
a shabby brown hold-all in the other. 

He walked slowly down the great train that curved 
like a snake round the platform and stretched away out 
of sight. 

“Is this carriage right for Scar?” he asked an 
inspector. 

The man stood back and read over the carriage the 
word “ Blackhaven. ” 

“That’s right, sir,” he said. “This carriage runs 
straight through. Don’t change at Carnforth. ” 

John Blunt climbed into the carriage without saying 
thank you. He crossed the corridor and flung his 
knapsack into the far corner of a third-class carriage. 
Then he took off his coat and returning to the corridor 
leaned out of the window and watched the busy platform 
with grave eyes. 

A newspaper boy stared at the big man in the blue 
17 


18 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


shirt, leaning bareheaded otit of the window, and cat- 
called to another boy to come and stare too. 

A hot and nondescript young man, hat in hand, hunt- 
ing up and down the train, threw a swift glance up at him, 
paused uncertainly, passed on, climbed up into the corri- 
dor, and hunted up and down it, peering into the carriages. 

He brushed past the gray-breeched figure with the 
leather belt about its waist leaning out of the window, 
saw the knapsack lying in the corner, the initials J. B. 
in large black letters on its gray-green canvas, and turned 
to the blue back. 

“Beg pardon. Are you Mr. Blunt?” he panted 
nervously. 

“Well?” said the blue back, never turning. 

“Oh, beg pardon, sir,” stuttered the young man, “I 
was expecting somebody in black and a top hat. That 
is ... I would say ... I see in to-day’s 
Chronicle ” 

“I wear my camera instead of a band of crape,” said 
John Blunt. “Got a note for me from Hicks?” 

“Yes, sir — Mr. Hicks’s compliments.” 

The big man stretched a hand behind him. 

The youth thrust the note into it, tittering, and 
waited, his eyes on the broad gray breeches before him. 

“Is that all, sir?” 

“That’s all, ” said John Blunt, the note unopened in his 
hand, “unless you want to come with me to Cumberland. ” 

The youth giggled and got down. 

As the minute-hand of the station clock covered the 
XII the great train stirred to life as though automati- 


THE NORTHERN MAIL 


19 


cally. There was no bustle, whistle, jerk, or strain. 
Silently, as life beginning, smooth as flowing water, im- 
perceptible as falling dusk, it slid forth into space, 
gathering way as it went. 

John Blunt, still at his window, nodded approval. 

People on the platform slipped past him with up- 
turned faces. Amongst them a little old lady hobbling 
along the train side caught his eye. 

The great shaggy face gleamed suddenly. A light from 
within seemed to shine through its darkness and soften 
it. He leaned a little forward. 

“Hullo, mother,” he said in a voice as deep as it was 
tender. 

The little old lady raised a sweet wizened face, saw the 
gleam on the great shaggy visage gliding past above her, 
smiled suddenly, lifted a delicate lavender hand to wave, 
remembered herself, blushed as suddenly as she had 
smiled, and dropped her eyes. 

John Blunt returned to his carriage and his corner, 
the gleam still on his face. 

There was only one other occupant of the carriage: a 
square-set man with a short beard and stubby fingers 
who was taking a book bound in red paper from a rusty 
black bag at his side. 

The man settled in his corner and opened his book. 

John Blunt read the title on its scarlet back: 

Plain Words for Working Men 

the author of it, John Blunt , and a note on the cover 
drew attention to the fact that half a million copies had 
been sold in England and America. 


20 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


Then he settled down in his own corner, opened Hicks’s 
note and read: 

Brackenhurst, Florence, Susan, dau. of 5th Earl of Scar, 
b. Scar Hall, Cumberland, 1859. Owns about 25,000 acres 
and minerals in Cumberland. Clubs: none. Town-house: 
none. Motor-cars: none. Neither drinks, smokes, or swears. 
Protestant, Conservative, Primrose Dame. Recreation: coun- 
try life. Address : Scar Hall, Cumberland. 

John Blunt grinned, and turned his eyes to the window. 

Outside the station silver-threaded rain slurred the 
window. The hoardings were slipping by. Now the 
train slid between the backs of dingy brown houses, 
garden-less, sun-less, soul-less, a blotchy plane tree the 
only green thing visible. Here a few rags flapped on a 
clothesline; there a gaunt woman stared at a window; or 
squalid children squatted round a doorstep in a court- 
yard. Sometimes a tall chimney lifted above the waste 
of tiles, and as they crossed the bridges the brown streets 
ran like streams beneath, spotted black with drifting 
traffic. 

Soon they were upon the ragged edges of the great 
city. Amid the gray-brown was an occasional gleam of 
green; and the gleam grew and widened. It was like 
the sea stealing in upon the land through channels, inlets, 
and spear-headed estuaries that broaden always till they 
fade into the ocean. 

They were passing through that disputed belt which 
of necessity separates every town from the surrounding 
wilderness; where Man has encroached on Nature and yet 
not conquered; where therefore the battle still rages and 


THE NORTHERN MAIL 


21 


there is ruin, desolation, and all the hideous necessary 
insignia of Man’s advance: rows of raw little houses; 
notice boards; new-made roads; dismal allotment gardens, 
cabbage-patched; skeleton buildings; scaffolding poles; 
piles of brick; rubbish heaps; and small boys fighting 
in asphalted play yards. 

Hedges, trees, and even a red and white cow came into 
view. Mother Earth began to look herself, green, goodly, 
and of infinite resource; leashed indeed by Man, as yet 
half her master and half her slave, but no longer ham- 
mered out of all semblance to herself. Here a hay-stack 
was piled on her broad back; there an old horse grazed 
upon her greenness; and anon a group of little men with 
bowed backs took toll of her abundance. 

John Blunt opened his lungs; his face grew calm, and 
his eyes quietly satisfied. 

He was the natural man returning to the nature 
which had evolved him. 

The square-set man in the corner opposite had taken 
a clay pipe from his pocket and was filling it. His book 
was on his knee open at the frontispiece, as he pressed the 
tobacco down with stubby forefinger. 

“This isn’t a smoking carriage,” said John Blunt 
curtly. 

The man raised thoughtful, far-off eyes. 

“Ye dawn’t object, do ye?” he asked mildly, dropping 
each word like a pebble and with a suggestion of a jerk 
into the pools of silence. 

For all answer John Blunt took out a battered pipe 
with a grin and chucked his hat on to the seat. His 


22 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


forehead shone out white and broad between the stormy 
gray of his hair and his sun-browned lower face. 

The other eyed him furtively and peeped at the fron- 
tispiece of the book upon his lap. 

Then he shot forward, a wave of colour surging across 
his face. 

“Thou art not John Bloont?” he cried, his speech 
breaking its banks and broadening amazingly. “T* 
John Bloont as wrote this’n?” He slapped the book 
upon his knee, and gazed from the frontispiece to the 
man opposite. “Thou art , by God!” 

He crossed the carriage, took the other’s hand in both 
of his, and hugged it between his knees, drinking in his 
companion’s face with eager eyes. 

“Thou art John Bloont !” he crowed, as though chal- 
lenging the other to deny it. “Thou art.” 

“I’m the old man all right,” said the other genially. 
“Easy with that flipper! Who’s yourself? and all 
about you?” 

The question was soon answered. The man’s name 
was Ben Brocklebank. He worked in the ship yards 
at Barrow, where the great strike was on; and had come 
up to London as one of the men’s delegates. 

Happen Mr. Bloont was cooming to Barrer as strike 
correspondent for the Morning Chronicle ? 

No, Mr. Blunt was doing a little skirmishing of his own, 
but he was mighty keen to know how the great war was 
going at Barrow. 

The other wanted little encouragement. And once off, 
it only needed an occasional blast from his new friend’s 
bellows to keep him at white heat: the sudden and un- 


THE NORTHERN MAIL 


23 


expected subsidy from the German ship yards; the at- 
titude of the Swedish men and the contemplated strike 
in sympathy at Stockholm; the possibility of the trouble 
becoming world wide and affecting other trades; and so 
from the particular to the general, from England to 
Europe, from Europe to humanity, wandering over the 
whole field of world politics as affecting the Labour 
movement and the advance of Democracy. 

The two were thoroughly in sympathy; and there 
was a genial savagery about them as they talked loudly 
and with thumping fists, their bearded faces close, and 
eyes glowing, that made men passing in the corridor 
pause and grin and women hunt swiftly by with scared 
eyes. 

The rain scourged the window, sluicing it. Neither 
paid heed. At Rugby a woman with some children got 
in. The two men helped them up, talking over their 
heads as they did so. 

The woman looked at the two great gusty-laughing 
fellows, listened to them, and finally herded her children 
into the next compartment. 

4 ‘Socialists or something,” she confided to her neigh- 
bour there. “Like mad things.” 

“I know,” said the neighbour sympathetically. “Poli- 
tics. Sickening. ” 

It was not till they had reached Preston that the two 
men had talked themselves out. 

Brocklebank leaned back in his corner, chewing his 
pipe, and eyed his companion still with mild amazement. 

“And so thou art John Bloont!” he said. “And A 
thowt thou wast a gentleman. ” 


24 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT j 

“No, thank God/’ said the other. “I dropped all 
that years ago. ” 

At Preston an elderly woman in black with prim, 
demure face got in. But for a mildly subdued air and 
a certain monotonous quiet about her clothes, she might 
have been a lady. On her arms were many wraps, 
and in her hand a paper of gorgeous lilies. 

She turned to the porter behind her. 

“There are eight boxes,” she said. “Lady Rachel 
Carmelite. ” 

A girl in a green dust cloak came streaming down the 
platform. 

“Kitty-my-son!” she cried in hushed, eager voice. 
“We do change at Carnforth for Scar.” 

“No, you don’t,” said John Blunt from his corner. 

The girl lifted brown eyes to his, half-amused and 
half resentful. 

“The guard said so,” she answered, a touch coldly. 

“He’s a liar,” said John Blunt, and leaned out to a 
passing inspector. 

“Do I change at Carnforth for Scar?” 

“No, sir; not this carriage. Runs straight away 
through to Blackhaven. ” 

John Blunt sat back. 

“Give me best?” he asked the girl. 

A little smile fluttered about her eyelids. 

“All right,” she said, shy and sweet, “this once.” 


\ 


Ill 


THE SLOW TRAIN 

After Carnforth the weather cleared. 

The evening was pale and wonderful as the train 
entered the hill country, the sea glancing and gleaming 
upon their left. 

Vast stretches of sand, pearly pink in the low light, 
and desolate save for here and there a snowy gull sen- 
tinel beside a pool, lay on one side of the slow train; 
the hills upon the other looming black against a pale- 
green light. 

John Blunt betook himself to the corridor and leaned 
out into the evening, heart and eyes and nostrils wide. 

The ruminating train lumbered over long aqueducts, 
skirted dark hill sides, and stopped to browse at every 
picturesque-named station. It moved deliberately as 
though it too would enjoy the evening; crossing the sands 
of Morecambe Bay or skirting them; hugging the coast- 
line, winding in and out with it; here and there boldly 
leaping a broad-bladed estuary, then turning timidly 
back upon itself, looping, linking, and burrowing inland, 
always to sweep seaward again as though drawn irresist- 
ibly by the magic of the great enchanter. 

John Blunt marched the length of the corridor to see 
if there was a dining saloon on the train. 

25 


26 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

He found no food, but something he seemed to like 
better. 

For at the far end he stayed and stood with eyes shut, 
head up, and nostrils wide, as one stands in a bed of 
violets on a morning of May. 

Something stirred him strangely, something very sweet. 

Slowly he opened his eyes. 

The girl in the green dust cloak was looking at him. 

She sat alone in a first-class carriage and smiled at 
him with dark eyes — like a child uncertain whether he 
was friend or foe. 

Suddenly he smiled back. 

Whether she was beautiful or not John Blunt did not 
know and did not ask himself: he knew she drew him. 

Her hair was dark and her eyes brimming and gracious. 

One black curl strayed on her broad white brow. 
There was a hint of the gypsy about the rich darkness 
of her hair, and eyes, and colouring; just a suggestion 
that she might be by blood akin to that remote 
maiden, her namesake, for whom a young man once 
served fourteen faithful years in the land of the people 
of the East. 

He stood in the door, and stared awkwardly, his great 
face glowing, and eyelids rising and falling, owl-like. 

It was clear that he wanted to say something and lacked 
the courage. 

“There’s more room in here,” he said at last, doleful 
and deep. 

His mournful voice and manner made her bubble up 
a little laugh. 

She pointed to the seat opposite her. 


THE SLOW TRAIN 


27 


“Come in then, ” she murmured, her eyes dark and 
shy and smiling, and the colour fluttering faintly in her 
cheek. “I’m my lone — perk’d up in glistering grief. ” And 
the soft voice with the chuckle in it seemed to stir and 
shake him as that mysterious fragrance in the corridor 
had done. 

“I’m third-class,” he said; and his voice came rumbling 
mysteriously like an echo from a dream cavern. 

“And proud of it,” she answered, a teasing light in the 
brown eyes that were all the more appealing because of 
the plainness of the surrounding face. 

She was gathering courage, and becoming beauti- 
fully bold. 

There was something sheepish as of a school-boy about 
the great man as he slouched into the carriage and sat 
down awkwardly opposite her. 

“Perhaps,” he growled meekly. 

He raised his eyes to hers, and they were wonderfully 
gentle in the dusk. 

She was too true a woman to resent his stare, which 
was no stare, or to misunderstand it. He was dwelling 
in the sweetness of her womanhood — she felt it; and it 
was good for him; and for that purpose God had 
made her. 

She looked away through the window. 

“Furness,” she said tenderly, tapping the pane, 
and again her voice stirred and shook him. “We shall 
see the Abbey in a moment. ” 

He did not answer, breathing deeply, breathing her in. 

She became a thought uneasy. He seemed to wake 
from a dream, and cleared his throat. 


28 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“How I love travelling first-class,” he said. “It 
makes me feel so snobby. ” 

She bowed her head at him. 

“Yes,” she smiled, “but you’re cheating.” 

His eyes twinkled mischievously; and behind the gray 
and bearded man she saw the boy peeping at her, and 
went out to meet him with laughter and delight. 

“I’m cheating for a few minutes. Who’s cheating all 
the time?” he said. “And I’m cheating the railway 
company. Who’s cheating humanity?” 

The girl nodded and chuckled, wise as a child. 

“ I know what you mean, ” she said. “ I know — though 
I’m not a Fabian. I think my own little thoughts 
inside, but I don’t say. ” 

Her chin was on her chest, and her eyes on him grave 
and firm though not defiant. 

Then both laughed. 

The dusk was falling fast, and the station lamps were 
lit as they glided in among the tall chimneys of Barrow. 

Brocklebank peeped in from the platform. 

“Good-bye, sir,” he called with a jolly grin. “A 
see you’ve joined the enemy. ” 

“I’m not the enemy,” cried the girl reproachfully, 
and held out her little gloved hand. 

The other took it in his great bare one. 

“You’d not be if you knew,” he said. “That’s where 
the trouble lays. . . . Good-bye, Mr. Bloont. Proud 
to ha’ met yo\ ” 

“Who’s that?” asked the girl, when he was gone. 

“Working man,” said John Blunt, laconically. 


THE SLOW TRAIN 


29 


The girl sat back among her cushions. 

“Ours,” she growled, making her voice very deep, 
“ Monsieur Ours,” and put out a tiny tip of tongue. 

The night was brilliant as they drew out of Barrow. 

Soon the clang and glow of the fierce little furnace 
town was left behind them. 

Here and there the lights of mining villages twinkled 
under stars; and northward somewhere a sea of hills 
broke and tossed and tumbled in the darkness. 

The girl led into the corridor, and leaned out into the 
night. 

The train crept now along the edge of streaming 
sands, one broad silver snake winding through the heart 
of them. The water shone; the earth was still and very 
dark. Once through the rumble of the train came a 
desolate wailing, and they discerned a company of dim- 
winged spirits wheeling over ghostly waters. 

Across the sands a long black hill lay like a bulwark 
against the night; and over the crest of it hung a bright 
horn of moon. 

“Dark Coombe,” murmured the girl. “These are 
the Sands of Duddon.” She began to croon to herself; 

“I thought of thee my partner and my guide 
As being passed away. ...” 

“Vain sympathies, ” responded a deep voice at her ear — 


He ceased. 


'For backward Duddon as I cast my eyes, 
I see what was and is and will abide.” 


30 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“Go on,” she murmured. 

He finished the great sonnet in deep and resonant 
voice, rolling out the last line — 

“We feel that we are mightier than we know.” 

There was a pause. Then the girl said very quietly, 
“Thank you.” 

They crossed the sands, curled round and rumbled 
along at the foot of Dark Coombe, the tip of the moon 
peeping at them over the crest. 

A white glow in the blackness behind showed where 
Barrow lay. As they looked a shower of sparks flung 
up amid dark chimneys like the spray of a breaking wave 
of fire. 

“What’s that?” cried the girl. 

“Furnaces at Barrow.” 

“Oh, splendid!” 

“Glorious!” said the man ironically — “half -naked 
men sweating their souls out all the night that ” 

“The bloated aristocrat may bloat, ” grumbled the girl 
in mock-bass. 

“ — may twiddle his thumbs and take his twenty 
per cent. . . . Good night. ” 

He swung away laughing down the corridor; and his 
heart was curiously uplifted. 

“Cross?” came a pursuing voice, tender and teas- 
ing. 

He half turned. 

The girl was looking after him. Her veil was down, 
and her eyes shining and smiling behind it. 


THE SLOW TRAIN 


31 


He gave a swaggering school-boy roll to his shoulders 
as he moved away, and heard her chuckle behind him. 

On the platform at Scar he found her standing with 
her maid beside a pile of luggage under a lamp. 

“Is that your little lot?” he asked grimly, slouching 
by, knapsack in one hand and hold-all in the other. 

“It’s most of it my maid’s,” said the girl. “Isn’t 
it, Kitty?” 

“This is, my lady,” said the maid, smiling sedately, 
and pointing to one small tin trunk. 

“Oh, Kitson!” cried the girl, turning her back. “You 
— you!” 

The man and the girl crossed the line together. In the 
darkness her shoulder touched his. 

Outside the station a great two-horse ’bus with a foot- 
man at the door blocked the way. In the shadow of it 
stood a tiny cart with a pony little bigger than a calf in it. 

“Your’n,” said John Blunt to the girl, pointing to the 
’bus. “Mine,” pointing to the other. 

She laid a finger on his arm. 

“Where are you stopping?” asked the girl. “Do 
tell. The Brackenhurst Arms?” 

“Wart Cottage,” he answered. “Whart a pity, isn’t 
it?” and giggled at his own pun. 

While a man’s mother lives, some aroma of his boyhood 
still clings to him. And John Blunt at fifty had more of 
the lad about him than many a man twenty years his 
junior. 

The girl was swift to catch his school-room humour, 
and to answer to it. 


32 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“Ah,” she said. “Ask for me at the ’all — the ’all.” 

She climbed into the ’bus and the footman grinned as 
he slammed the door. 

John Blunt crossed to the pony cart that lay in the 
shadow of the ’bus. 

“Is this thing from Mrs. Fell?” he asked abruptly. 

“A belayve so,” said the surly imp in charge, not to 
be outdone in bad manners. 

“Don’t ye know ?" snorted John Blunt, dropping his 
hold-all into the little cart. 

The urchin did not answer. 

“Thou’rt to walk,” he said authoritatively. “There’s 
nobbut room for one,” and he climbed up himself. 

“Bravo boy!” came a teasing voice from the darkness. 

John Blunt was trudging behind the pony cart as the 
great ’bus with its two men on the box and pile of luggage 
rolled past him with a shining of lamps and a clapping of 
horses’ feet. 

He saw the girl’s face, moon-like against the window, 
and peering at him. 

As the ’bus passed on into the darkness, her laughing 
face peeped out at him over the door; and again he heard 
that mocking, 

“ Monsieur Ours." 


IV 


WART COTTAGE 

John Blunt trudged on in darkness at the tail of the 
little cart. 

There was a smile upon his face, and a strange sweet- 
ness and peace seemed to have stolen over him. 

He shook it off as though it were a loose cloak and began 
to whistle. It stole back upon him like a tide, wistful 
and whispering; and he walked on silently, smiling in 
the night, his eyes soft and very bright. 

A girl’s face was smiling at him out of the dusk, a girl’s 
face with brimming brown eyes. 

The lights of occasional cottages were strung jewel- 
like along the road. Here and there a farmhouse shone 
among shadowy trees, black barns, and stacks. At the 
top of a hill a little church perched above the road, its 
belfry dark and cold and hollow against the brilliant 
night. 

The cottages were left behind. Now the road ran 
dimly between hedges, beasts grazing noisy and unseen 
on either side, and a peewit calling desolately in the dark- 
ness overhead. 

The bright flake of moon sank behind Dark Coombe, 
the crest of the hill keen cut in the glow; a continent of 
cloud drifted up across the night; the pony stumbled, 
33 


34 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


striking fire; and John Blunt turned up his coat collar 
and said abruptly, 

“Come up!” 

He had left the School-boy behind him in the 
train. 

A lonely cottage on the right of the road made a black 
blot against the stars. It was dark as the grave and 
as still. 

Here the little cart stopped. 

“Is this home, sweet home? ” asked John Blunt moodily. 

“Aye; this’ll be hers,” chirped the lad, jumping down 
and making as great a to-do with the reins as a four- 
horse coachman. 

“Well, there’s no place like it, so they say,” muttered 
the other, and pushing through the crazy gate, came to 
the door. 

There was neither bell nor knocker. 

The Spirit of Resistance seized the great man. 

He kicked the bottom of the door savagely, found the 
handle, and burst in. 

A tubby woman, with a candle swaling in her hand, 
rolled down the dark passage toward him, hugging a 
cat beneath her arm. 

“That thou?” she said impassively. 

“My name’s Blunt !” growled the great man. “Where 
are my rooms? — and why isn’t there a light?” 

The woman opened the door upon the left and held 
the candle. John Blunt shouldered in, looked round, 
and muttered, “Good Lord!” 

Then he threw his knapsack on the table, and flung 
the window wide. 


WART COTTAGE 


35 


The candle in the woman’s hand blew out. 

“ Oh, for heaven’s sake, bring a lamp ! ” stormed the other. 
“This place is like the bottom-most pit with the fire gone 
out, and the devil asleep, and the damned sitting round 
and trying to warm their toes at the cinders.” 

The woman growled and grunted in the darkness and 
went out. 

The door shut and opened again. 

“Two shillin’,” came a boy’s small robin-like voice. 

The man calmed down. 

“Two shillings? What for?” 

“Orruz. Cart. My time and labour, ” piped the bird- 
voice, very bold. 

John Blunt grinned and struck a florin into the boy’s 
dim, outstretched hand. 

The lad lit a match and examined the coin shrewdly, 
biting it. 

“Happen it might ha’ bin a penny by this light,” he 
explained cunningly, blew out the match, and was gone 
swiftly. 

John Blunt pursued. 

“Cheeky young scoundrel !” he roared. “Hi! where’s 
my bag?” 

“ In t’ dyke, ” replied the urchin from the night. “Hope 
you’ll like her. She’s a beauty, she is.” 

John Blunt stumbled out after him. 

The pony cart was rattling away in the darkness, the 
boy laughing mockingly; and his hold-all lay like a dead 
thing by the road side. 

When he came back the woman was trimming a lamp 
on the bare table in his room. The lamp had neither 


36 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

globe nor shade, and the glass was cracked and smoke- 
dimmed. 

“Where’s the globe?” asked John Blunt. 

“Crackit.” 

“Haven’t you got another?” 

“Thou canst buy one t’morn and thou needest one.” 

John Blunt dropped into a rickety basket chair. 

“Bring my supper,” he said, “Angel of Light.” 

The woman rocked on her feet. 

“There is none,” she answered. 

The other half rose, his eyes flaring. 

“No supper!” he cried. “What’s the woman think I 
live on?” 

“None was ordered,” said the woman sullenly, and 
rolled out. 

“Have you got any eggs?” he called after her. 

“Happen A’ve an egg or two.” 

“Then muck ’em up somehow for the Lord’s sake. I 
haven’t tasted food since breakfast. . . . Where’s 

my bedroom?” 

“Through yon door.” 

He opened it. A tiny, bare, carpetless stair curled 
upward into darkness. 

John Blunt snatched the candle from the dresser and 
stumbled up the stair. 

It led into a roomy attic, bare and bleak. There was 
a dowdy bed under the slope of the roof, and a low-arched 
window with a crooked sash and without a blind. A 
meagre wash-hand stand was in one corner, and an old 
deal chest of drawers in another. 

He held the candle up, and looked about him with 


WART COTTAGE 37 

grim eyes; then stumbled down the curling stairs 
again. 

The woman sat in darkness rocking in a low chair be- 
fore the kitchen fire, her cat upon her knees. 

“Supper nearly ready?” he asked. 

“A’m waitin’ for t’candle,” she answered. 

John Blunt put it down upon the dresser with 
exaggerated delicacy. 

“May the Lord love you as I do,” he said quietly, and 
crossed to his sitting room. 

Walls and mantel-piece were alike bare of ornament. 

There was one rackety old basket chair and one small 
wooden one. 

Tiny though the room was it looked almost large 
through lack of furniture. 

There was a certain satisfaction in John Blunt’s eyes 
as he looked round. 

The room was not stuffed up with trash at all events. 

He opened his knapsack, took out a card, and wrote 
in pencil. 

Wart Cottage, 

Home of one Wart Hog by name Hannah Fell, 

At 9.30 being still unfed. 

All well. A good journey. — Jack-o. 

On the back of the card he wrote 
Mother 

Then he lit a match and burned the card deliberately. 


V 


JOHN BLUNT SEES A LIGHT 

All night the wind howled afar like a wolf pack, 
and the rain pattered on the roof above John Blunt’s 
head. 

He lay awake and listened to it, his arms bare behind 
his head. 

Outside a peewit cried; and the rag of lace curtain, 
sopping wet, flapped dismally. Through the arch of the 
window he could see the dim drift of clouds, and beneath 
could hear the rustle and sway of corn. 

Once he moaned and, turning on his side, lay a while 
with his shaggy head buried on his arms. 

The loneliness, the great loneliness that comes to each 
man once only in each life, had come to John Blunt. 
The woman who once he was, in whose warm darkness 
his soul had found its habit of flesh, whose breast had 
known his cheek and the soft touch of his baby fingers, 
who had held his toddling hand, and chided him and 
tidied him when a white-collared school-boy, who slowly 
and sweetly had passed from the mother to the friend 
as the boy grew bearded and established in himself, 
had left him after fifty years of comradeship and holiest 
communion. 

The bridge on which he had crossed from heaven to 

38 


JOHN BLUNT SEES A LIGHT 39 

earth had broken behind him. He was cut off from his 
base. 

Was there a way back? 

He stood alone on earth, his head in the rushing black- 
ness, groping in the Great Spaces, groping for the love he 
could no longer feel. 

Was there such a love? 

He sought for it in the darkness with his hand, feeling 
blindly above him; and clutching only air dropped his 
hand hopelessly. 

Then he threw off the sheet that covered his sinewy 
body and stalked with dry, seared eyes to the window. 

There was a pool of water on the floor. He stood in 
it, unheeding. The wind blew chill on his great chest, 
and the rain sprinkled him. 

With folded arms he stood and stared out into the 
night. 

There were no stars in heaven or light on earth. 

The wind blew beneath a livid sky, distressing the sea of 
corn that surged up to the cottage wall and broke against 
it in pale, shimmering flood. The road beneath streamed 
away dimly into the darkness. The peewit cried out of 
the night; the wind howled; the rain spat; the rag of lace 
curtain flapped. 

Groping along the mantel-piece he struck a match; 
and the light of it made the raindrops on his hairy chest 
sparkle like diamonds. 

On the mantel-piece was the miniature of a girl in the 
simple-bodiced dress of the fifties, a ribbon in her hair; 
and beside it the photograph of an old lady in a cap. 

It did not take a son to recognize that the two faces 


40 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


were the same, fifty years between them — the one of 
the gay girl entering the Valley, her hopes before her; 
and the other of the grave old lady about to leave it, 
her experience behind. 

John Blunt took the photograph in his hand and read 
the face by the light of the match, which burned his 
fingers and went out. 

In the darkness he pressed the photograph to his lips. 

The man Society had long ago christened the Un- 
speakable Blunt sobbed because of his great loneliness. 

Then curiously rumbling to himself he went back to 
the window. 

The peewit wailed; the wind moaned; the pale corn 
swayed and rustled. 

John Blunt thrust his head out into the cool rain, and 
stared through the darkness. 

Far away a light flashed suddenly, burned a steady 
minute, and was gone again. 

John Blunt held his breath. 

A minute passed and he cried, 

“Ah!” 

The light that had gone out lived again, burned stead- 
ily, and was drowned once more in the sea of darkness. 

He watched it come and go with fascinated eyes. 

The life, death, and resurrection of that remote and 
tiny star brought calm and comfort to his heart. 

Each time it flashed in the night he smiled and lifted 
an answering hand. 

Each time it went out he waited with patient, eager 
eyes staring faithfully across the darkness and storm 
till it was born again. 


JOHN BLUNT SEES A LIGHT 


41 


The strain and restlessness upon his face passed away. 

He withdrew from the window. 

As he did so, his eyes caught the twinkle of another 
light. 

It was a star, peeping at him through the gray — peep- 
ing and gone. 

It seemed to laugh at him and he laughed back. 

Then he turned and ran back to bed, chuckling like 
a school-boy. 

As he did so a pair of teasing brown eyes danced before 
him in the darkness. 

He paused as one blinded, and passed his hands before 
his face. 

Then he stood and blinked. 

Eyes or stars? Which were they? 


VI 


THE OLD BROWN MAN 

It was before six next morning when he stumbled down 
the little curling stairs, and his face was purged and purified. 

Hannah Fell was on her hands and knees before the 
hearth in the kitchen, her great gray cat, deep in soft 
fur, curled between her shoulders. 

As she worked she moved delicately so as not to disturb 
the cat who crowned her, cooing to it in voice of extra- 
ordinary sweetness, calling it a thousand endearing names. 

John Blunt stood in the door in blue shirt and old gray 
trousers, watching the woman and her lover; and his 
eyes were very kind. 

He seemed strangely and beautifully subdued. 

“What about a bath?” he said at last. 

The woman half turned a smooth brown face to him, 
surly and suspicious, and her eyes did not meet his. 

“There’s t’ river.” 

“Where’s t’ river?” 

“Outside,” and she resumed her work. 

John Blunt looked at her broad back, and the storms 
began to gather in his face again. 

Then he tramped back to his attic. 

When he came down an hour later, a bundle of clothes 
lay on his arm. 


42 


THE OLD BROWN MAN 


43 


“Dry these, will you?” he said quietly. “The rain 
came through the window last night and soaked ’em.” 

“And ma floor,” said the woman surlily, throwing 
up her head to a dark patch on the ceiling. 

John Blunt said nothing. 

He crossed the stone-floored passage and stared into 
his sitting room. 

The room was tiny and bleak to a degree. Its one 
window looked out on a flint wall three feet away, and 
there was no curtain to it. The table knew no cloth, 
and the floor one rag of threadbare carpet. 

He took up the rag of carpet and pitched it calmly 
into the kitchen. Then he went to the sink and washed 
his hands. 

The woman watched him, smouldering. 

The morning was dark with ragged clouds still dropping 
rain, as he went out. 

The great hills rose before him, gnarled and knobby 
and misty-shining in the morning. He lifted his eyes 
to them. They lived and loomed before him, near and 
far, a herd of them, close-packed, and tumbling in mist, 
like a school of leviathans thrusting huge backs above 
the level of the water as they play. 

The cloud that had descended on him lifted somewhat. 
He opened wide his nostrils and seemed to breathe in 
what he saw. 

A carter passing with a timber wagon saw him standing 
in the door of the cottage and grinned secretly. 

John Blunt saw the grin, and the cloud descended 
on him again. 

He crossed the road to a gate in the field opposite. 


44 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


A cart mare with a woolly-tailed foal grazed within. 
He leaned over the gate. 

“Come and comfort me, old lady,” he murmured. 
“You’re a woman at all events.” 

The old mare lifted a hairy face, gazed at him, thrust- 
ing out her brown muzzle, blew, and resumed her grazing. 

He turned his back upon the hills and strolled along 
the road he had come last night. 

In the fields hard by a pair of peewits wheeled broad- 
winged. A young peasant woman clacked by in brass- 
toed clogs, a little boy running at her side. The two were 
chattering and laughing together. 

John Blunt looked after them. Then he resumed his 
slow march, his hands behind him, and eyes on the 
ground. 

At the church on the hill that he had passed last night 
he turned, and strolled slowly home. 

An old brown labouring man stumping sturdily down 
the road with a sack upon his back lifted a shrewd face 
to his and paused. 

“A used to harvest in these parts,” he said, “but 
now there’s nothing doin’ for men o’ ma years. Once ye 
shew a bit o’ white” — he touched his hair — “you’re 
done. . . . You haven’t got a copper?” 

John Blunt said quietly, 

“I can’t help you,” and strolled on. 

The old brown man called after him in mild matter-of- 
fact voice: 

“A got one half-penny.” 

John Blunt, bareheaded in the sun, turned round and 
looked after him. 


THE OLD BROWN MAN 


45 


The old brown man, a little bowed, was trudging 
down the road, his sack upon his back, and a gleam of 
white hair showing above it. 

The great earth rolled rich about him; the sparrows 
in the road pecked dung with gusto; in a cosey farm yard 
upon the left fat hens clucked and crooned and foraged 
for themselves; a man was emptying buckets into a stye, 
and from within came the grunt and chuckle of its inmates 
wallowing in food; in the good, green fields on either side 
the road horses and cows ate their fill at ease; and the old 
brown man, lord of them all, tramped along the barren 
road between set hedges, his half-penny in his pocket, 
his belly empty, and all he could call his own upon his 
back. 

John Blunt walked after him with grave eyes. 

“Lonely?” he asked. 

The old man stopped and cocked a shrewd eye up at 
him. 

“Lonely?” he said. “Nay. A got no one; but A’m 
not to say lonely. ” 

“Where are your folk?” 

The old man hitched his sack. 

“ Mother’s down in the lowlands; wife went off with 
an Irish chap; and children’s dead or don’t know 
where. ” 

He made the statement in a mild matter-of-fact way, 
not greatly moved himself, nor expecting to move the 
the other. 

In the battle he had lost his edge and was now too 
blunt deeply to feel himself or to cause deep feeling 
in others. And he was too simple to be aware that 


46 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

there was profoundest tragedy in his very lack of emo- 
tion. 

“I’m sorry,” said John Blunt. 

“Ah, well,” said the old man, tumbling along. 

They walked side by side, the great-limbed gentleman 
in loose gray coat and light foot wear, and the little old 
trudging labourer, his corduroys gartered beneath his 
knee, his boots stiff as wood, and both hands clutching 
jealously the sack upon his back. 

John Blunt offered the other a fill of tobacco; and the 
old man accepted it. 

Neither spoke. 

“Shall I carry your sack a bit?” asked John Blunt. 

“Nay, ”said the old man a thought defiantly. “That’s 
mine.” He gave the sack a heave to reassure himself as 
to its reality. 

The sense of Property was strong in him. 

At the church John Blunt said: 

“ Good day, ” and turned. 

“Good day,” said the old man, and added after a 
pause, “Thank ye.” 

He tramped along a little way, then turned and gazed 
after the great bareheaded stranger with a puzzled look 
in his shrewd eyes. 

Then he sat down by the roadside and stared hard 
at the grass, as though trying to recollect something. 

A curious peace settled upon his face as he began to 
puff at the pipe the other had filled for him. 

He thought he had met that bearded chap with them 
eyes before — he couldn’t remember where. 

Outside the cottage John Blunt met the postman. 


THE OLD BROWN MAN 


47 


“Anything for me?” he asked. “Blunt/’ 

The man looked through his letters. 

“No, sir.” 

John Blunt turned into the cottage. 

Standing before the mantel-piece, he fished a crumpled 
letter from his pocket, and began to read it. 

It was dated some years back and dealt briefly with the 
homely things of every day; but to the reader there was 
a warmth, an almost divine enthusiasm, about every 
word, that stirred his heart across the years. 

It began: 

Dearest Old Boy, 

I have found these handkerchiefs amongst mine and have 
marked them. What about your winter things, now the cold 
is on us? 

and ended: 

No end of love, dearest old boy, 

Your most loving mother, 
Margaret Blunt. 

Simple words, but sufficient to make a beautiful ten- 
derness well up into the face of the man reading them. 

He folded the letter reverently, and placed it back in 
his pocket. 

Then he wrote with his finger in the dust upon the 
mantel-piece : 

Loneliness is an illusion. There is no loneliness. There 
can’t be. We are all one, 


and turned to his meagre breakfast. 


48 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


After it he sat in the rickety basket chair and looked 
out through the window on the bare wall three feet away. 

There was no sun in the room, and he could see neither 
sky or green; only a wood-louse crawling up the flint. 

For long he sat thus with folded hands, his face gray 
and strained. 

The door opened softly, and the great cat padded in 
across the bare boards with uplifted tail, and jumped on 
to his leg. 

“Hullo!” said John Blunt deeply, opening his eyes. 

He took the soft creature silently in his arms and 
buried his face in its fur. 

■ Then he sat and nursed it, rocking, a curiously con- 
tented look upon his face. 

There was a sharp hissing in the door. 

He turned. 

Hannah Fell was peering in darkly. 

John Blunt smiled at her over the cat’s soft back. 

“I’ve found a friend,” he said. 

The woman hissed, love and hate, fear and jealousy, 
fighting in her face. 

“Pip, ma li’l sweetheart!” she purred. 

The cat paid no heed, and the woman swore beneath 
her breath. 

John Blunt’s face darkened; and the Spirit of Re- 
sistance swept across it. 

He rose and put the cat in the woman’s arms. 

“Take your cat!” he said, his eyes glowing; and 

she took it covetously. 


VII 


THE VILLAGE OF SCAR 

John Blunt was no longer subdued. 

He whistled as he flung his camera across his shoulder, 
and shoved a note-book into his pocket. 

Then he took the road briskly and passing the post- 
office on the left of the way turned in to ask for rooms. 
The white-haired old lady there with the reverent face 
worn with suffering told him she was full till the be- 
ginning of October. He passed out and dropped down 
a steep hill under sycamores. 

At the foot of it a group of ruddy gray cottages clus- 
tered on a bank about a pump. Here the road swept 
away to right and left, a low wall guarding it from the 
river rustling on the other side. 

He went to the wall and looked across it. 

Beyond the river, behind the swell of green lowlands, lay 
the hills in tumbled majesty, misty in the morning. 
On the hitherward bank was scattered the village: a 
few score cottages strung along the road, all of the 
solid freestone of the country-side. 

A gray bridge, the water flashing beneath its arch, 
bounded the village on the south; and the chimneys of 
a great house rose from a cloud of beeches over water 
meadows on the north. 

Through these meadows the river ran, cutting a silver 
49 


50 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


S out of the green, then skirted the road and rushing 
over shallows glanced under the bridge on its way sea- 
ward. 

The brown road streamed between shining river and 
ruddy cottages to the gates of the great house upon the 
hill. 

John Blunt made his way along the road toward the 
gates, the river rustling pleasantly beside him under ash 
and alder. 

A man and woman with fishing rods tramped by him; 
and here and there he caught the flash of a rod in the 
meadows. 

On the rise of the road, the last house in the village 
and somewhat apart from it, just before the iron gates 
of the great house amid the beeches, stood the Bracken- 
hurst Arms, a somewhat pretentious inn with timbered 
gables and tin-roofed veranda. 

Here were gathered fishermen tying flies, shouldering 
bags, winding reels. 

John Blunt passed through them and up the steps of 
the Inn. 

Fishermen’s baskets hung on a stand, and rods stood 
propped against the wall. To the left was a dining- 
room, the table bright with silver and white linen; on 
the right a bare parlour with benches and a labourer with 
a pot of ale. 

John Blunt marched down the passage through swing- 
ing doors. 

An old woman clacked about a great kitchen in clogs. 

“Any rooms?” asked John Blunt. 

“A’ll ask Miss Tyson.” 


THE VILLAGE OF SCAR 


51 


An elegant young person in black with a gold chain 
about her neck appeared. 

No; she was full up till the middle of September. This 
was her busy time. 

Were there any rooms in the village? 

She didn’t think so. 

John Blunt slouched out. 

In the road he met the parson with close-cropped 
white hair and jolly red-brown face emerging from a 
cottage. 

To him John Blunt put the same question. 

No; the parson knew of no rooms — except perhaps, the 
post-office. A visitor was lucky to get in anywhere at 
this time of year. As to Hannah Fell — the old man 
shrugged his shoulders with a smile. 

John Blunt climbed the hill and peered in through the 
great iron gates at the top, his face pressed against the 
bars. 

A broad drive swirled away under beeches, here and 
there a green lawn flowing down to it among islands of 
flowering shrubs. 

Somewhere within lay a great house, a girl inside it. 

John Blunt remembered the girl suddenly. 

Outside the gate a road-man was at work. 

John Blunt turned to him. 

“Who lives in here?” 

“Brackenhurst,” replied the man. 

“Is this Scar Hall then?” 

“So they say,” answered the man who had lived there 
all his life. 


52 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


John Blunt dropped down the hill again past the 
Brackenhurst Arms. 

The fishermen busy in the veranda looked after the 
great, gray, shaggy man sauntering down the road bare- 
headed, some with amusement, some with the scornful 
resentment with which the conventional man regards 
the man who is not quite conventional. 

John Blunt strolled on with deep in-drinking eyes. 

It was Saturday and therefore a holiday amongst the 
children. At the bend of the river where the road broad- 
ened and branched off up the hill under sycamores, a 
crowd of sturdy boys clattered past him playing hare and 
hounds. 

On the step of a cottage brilliant with a patch of 
orange nasturtium a young woman with deep-wrinkled 
brow stood and looked at him with kind eyes. 

About her were a group of little girls in aprons, their 
russet hair touched here and there to glory; one tiny maid 
with broad-blown, apple-blossom face nursing a kitten. 

“You’re a fat un,” grinned John Blunt as he passed. 

The little maid eyed him stolidly; her sisters curtseyed; 
and their calm-eyed mother said in the gently lifting voice 
of the hill country, 

“ Good morning, sir. ” 

John Blunt paused. 

“Can you tell me if there’s a shop in the village?” 
he asked with unusual gentleness. 

She pointed him across the way. 

He crossed to the shop and bought a map of the country- 
side. 

Then he came out and stood for a moment on the step. 


THE VILLAGE OF SCAR 


53 


Under an arch upon his right a speckled old white horse 
with a head like a tombstone and pendulous pink under- 
lip stood patiently. His ears were lop, his neck lank; 
he was very tall and very hollow. There was a noble 
sepulchral dignity about him as he stood there, a great 
white ghost, in dingy harness, and waited. 

John Blunt stroked the freckled face beside him. 

“Poor old boy,” he murmured. 

The horse rubbed his blinker against the other’s waist- 
coat, and John Blunt saw the creature’s eye, mild and 
blue and beautiful. 

Then he turned away. 

From where he stood he could see the whole length 
of the village street to the gates of the great house half 
a mile away. 

As he looked, a girl passed through them, and flowed 
toward him swiftly upon a bicycle. 

He paused. 

She made straight for him with fluttering skirts, bowl- 
ing down the hill, entirely unaware of his presence. 

It was as though he was pulling her, and she him. 

The two were drawing together with amazing speed, 
though he never budged. 

She was not pedalling. The forces of Nature, the Law 
of Gravity, were sweeping her to his feet. 

Now she reached the bottom of the slope beneath 
the Brackenhurst Arms and skimmed across the flat 
toward him. 

Her head was down to meet the wind. 

He could not see her face; but he knew that a pair of 


54 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


brimming, brown eyes lurked and laughed behind the 
great hat bound beneath her chin by a streaming scarf. 

She was coming to him, coming blindly. 

A moment he stood with eyes opening wide as though 
to engulf the swallow-like figure they reflected. 

Then he laughed harshly, with a wrench turned his 
back upon the swift-approaching girl, and plodded up 
the hill, up the hill, to the bleak and womanless little 
house awaiting him unwelcoming at the top. 

What an ass he was ! 

At his age too ! 


BOOK II 


THE COMING OF THE WOMAN 
















VIII 


JOHN BLUNT WRITES HOME 

The hills lay blue before him under clouds next morn- 
ing when John Blunt trotted out, whistling. 

A towel was slung about his neck; his hands were in 
his pockets and his hair unkempt; his shirt knew neither 
collar nor tie; and his neck showed strangely white be- 
neath the dark tangle of his beard. 

It was not yet six, and he had the road to himself as 
he dropped down the hill under the sycamores. 

In one of the cottages by the pump a woman stood in 
the door and shook a mat. From another a man in the 
red-stained clothes of an iron-ore worker emerged, his 
cap bristling with fishing flies. 

John Blunt jogged through the village, humming to 
himself, the river chattering over shallows on his right; 
and at the mill opposite the Brackenhurst Arms he turned 
off into the meadows, and took a raised green foot-path 
along the bank. 

Here the river ran deep-pooled under beeches, the far 
bank rising like a curtain between him and the encircling 
hills. 

A few cows were grazing in the meadow, and overhead 
rooks trooped noisily to work, regardless that it was 
Sunday. 


57 


58 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


On his left, beech woods ran down to the meadows, and 
through the trunks of them glimmered the great house. 

John Blunt came to a halt, his hands deep in his 
pockets, stared up at it, and smiled suddenly. 

“Monsieur Ours , ” he muttered. 

Then he turned to his inspection of the river. 

Beside a deep pool, sandy-bottomed, he stripped, and 
stood above the water in mighty-thewed manhood, strok- 
ing his arms. A roan cow lifted her head to stare, and 
in the wooded bank opposite a robin began to sing. 

Retreating from the bank, he took a run, his feet 
sprinkling the dew, plunged with a whoop, shot through 
the dark clear water like the ghost of himself, and rose 
blowing, his hair smooth and parted about his head. 

Now he turned on his back and stemmed the current 
with an occasional easy stroke of his arms and kick of 
his knees, humming deeply to himself, his brown face 
floating on the shining water; he played like an otter; 
he turned and tumbled, a gleam of white back or flash 
of foot showing; he soused in the water, sinking in it, 
surging through it. He was in it and of it. It belonged 
to him, and he to it. 

Once he dived under the dipping branch of a great 
beech and rose again in the shelter of its darkness to find 
a squirrel with a bushy tail sitting on the bank beside 
him. 

The little red thing squatted among the tree roots at 
its toilet, ignoring the great wet head with the glowing 
eyes peering at it across a few feet of leaf-sprinkled water. 

“Hullo, little un!” chuckled John Blunt, treading 
water. 


JOHN BLUNT WRITES HOME 59 

“Hullo, little un!” in rumbling bass voice, and he 
splashed with the flat of his hand. A shower of drops 
fell about the squirrel, which whisked its mighty tail and 
hopped casually away. John Blunt laughed. 

Climbing out, he rinsed the water off his limbs with his 
hands, pranced along the bank, blowing out his cheeks, 
put on his clothes, and jogged home, whistling. 

His hair was dripping, and his brown face gleamed, as 
he tumbled up the stairs, shouting in great glad voice 
to the dark woman in the kitchen. 

“Breakfast at eight, sharp.” 

The School-boy ruled the Man this morning. 

After breakfast John Blunt stood at the window in 
his shirt sleeves. 

There was a glimmer on his face, and a gathering light 
in his eyes, that would have made Martha tell you that 
Master John was up to his mischief. 

The Unspeakable Blunt looked at this moment more 
like a lad about to play a practical joke than that arch 
enemy of his country and his God whom orthodox Con- 
servatives abused over their wine. 

Pen, ink, and blotting paper were on the table at his 
back. 

Once he turned up a little yellow Churchman’s Alman- 
ack, on the outside of which was written in an old-lady’s 
hand “Jack-o,” and looked up a date. 

Several times he consulted his watch. 

As the minute hand covered the half past nine, he sat 
down at the table and took up his pen as he had done 
every Sunday morning at that hour when away from home 


60 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


since that far day, when, as a little mouse-headed boy 
of eight sitting at an inky bench amongst other little 
mouse-headed boys, he had written rather tearfully the 
first letter of those thousands that were to begin, 

Dear Mother: 

There was a look of quiet glee, something almost 
demure about the shaggy gray man in the blue shirt, 
who dipped his pen stealthily in the ink, squared his 
shoulders, plugged his cheek with his tongue, and wrote 
in a hand that seemed to be invaded by the school-boy 
spirit which possessed him, 

The fifteenth Sunday after Jacko’s birthday. 

It was a joke of some forty years standing; but he never 
tired of it, for neither did the lady to whom it was ad- 
dressed — that naive childish reminder of the great day 
of the year, its coming, and going. 

“As if I needed reminding,” the lady had confided, 
smiling, to a friend. 

Dear Little Mother: (wrote John Blunt) 

I came up here on Friday immediately after the funeral as 
special commissioner of the Chronicle on the job we discussed. 
The first article by Jonson on the Frensham Estate appeared 
yesterday, and I have a line from Hicks this morning to say 
that the Tory evening papers are already raging. There will 
be a big row all along the line about the whole business, and 
I am looking forward to being in it. 

This place, Scar, lies in the cultivated belt between the hills 
and the sea, with mining villages scattered all about it. We 
are about seven miles from Blackwater, the seaward-most of 
the lakes, which I think you and father visited on your honey- 
moon, the jolly little Wart joggling along between it and the sea. 

The village lies on the western bank of the stream under the 


JOHN BLUNT WRITES HOME 


61 


shadow of the Hall, where lives the Lady Autocrat who owns 
the lot — every house, every acre, everybody, and every soul. 
She seems by all accounts, to be a masterful sort of cuss, and 
before I’ve done up here I’m sure to clash with her, and expect 
some sport. 

As yet I’ve done nothing but buy a map and get a general 
outline of the district I’m to do. The woman rules over thirty 
thousand acres of country. And when I tell you that there is 
no chapel of any sort in the place and two churches, and that 
Dissenters, if there are any, have to walk miles to a place of 
worship, you will understand that the woman is a sound Church- 
woman, etc. 

On the other hand, in justice to her ladyship, and in pallia- 
tion of one-man or rather one-woman rule, I must say a more 
contented and prosperous village, judging by the outside, I 
never saw in my life. One can always judge of a place by the 
children in it. And here the children are a delight, the girls 
as fresh as daisies, and the boys rampagious as puppies. 
Such a lot of life about them! A wonderful change after our 
sleepy, slouching south-country lads. Boys, real boys! They 
romp and play horses up to fifteen. Yesterday I went out after 
dark and was nearly bowled over by a horde playing Red In- 
dians or something. I need hardly say I joined in. And I 
haven’t yet seen a lad with a cigarette in his mouth — though 
I ought to add there are no golf-links near to demoralize them. 
SHE won’t have one on her place, I believe. More power to 
her elbow! And the parson, a dear old boy, who walks about 
in a bowler hat, backs her manfully. 

It is very jolly to step out of the door to find the old hills 
crowding about one again. They make you feel gloriously 
South African. We aren’t in the heart of them, you understand ; 
but they are always there — something to lift your eyes to; 
and it’s good to find them waiting for you wherever you want 
them. My bedroom looks out over a corn field to the sand-hills. 


62 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


and the light-house that stands in the sea off dark Coombe, 
flashes messages at me at night. 

When I have done up here I shall go back home and wind up 
the house. Martha has earned her pension and must make up 
her mind to settle down — with Sister Jean to quarrel with and 
Abe to care for. I shall have no abiding place for the present. 
These are tremendous times. Thank God we live in them. 

Bliss was it in that Dawn to he alive. 

I packed Martha off to Sister Jean and sent the girl home. 
The latter’s a good little thing in spite of Martha, and wept 
her heart out about you. 

“ I don’t believe she is dead, ” she kept on saying. “ I won’t. ” 

Martha writes to-day complaining of Sister Jean as always. 
Well, she must just stick it. She says Abe is well and has 
settled down comfortably in his new quarters. And if Abe 
has settled down, we may be sure she will. 

The ole gal here, my Wart Hog, has the most gorgeous cat 
you ever saw. It wops Abe though I haven’t told Martha so, 
and shan’t unless she makes me cross. Bar the cat, these 
digs aren’t up to much. The ole gal and I don’t speak — except 
to curse. I think she’s off it and clearly she has a reputation. 
Everybody in the village grins when I go by, and they speak of 
me as her lodger. I should clear but for two excellent reasons : 

(1) I know the ole gal wishes me to, and you know your 
son well enough to know that the more she wishes to the more 
I won’t. 

(2) I don’t know where to go: the place is choc-a-bloc with 
Christians, clergymen, and others taking life for love of it — 
out of the river where God put it. 

His face grew grave and he looked out of the window. 

And now, dear mother, I must tell you a thing which I know 
will grieve you very much. Since you left, I have sworn once. 


JOHN BLUNT WRITES HOME 


63 


one word — you know : the one I brought back from South 
Africa. I won’t make excuses. I will only say that you shall 
not have to complain of this again. 

The cloud passed, and the light grew on his face. 

I have a slight cold but nothing for you to worry about, 
and some of my socks are giving out. I suppose I’d better 
send them to Martha now, hadn’t I? She has nothing to do 
all day but spoil Abe and quarrel with Sister Jean, and my socks 
may distract her attention. Wart Hog won’t do ’em, I’m sure. 

He looked out of the window again, and his gray eyes 
were far away and full of pain. 

My worst time is at morning post — when I always expect 
what never comes. I am used to being parted from you, but 
I am not used to missing your handwriting at breakfast. 

Be with me as much as you can. 

Your loving little Jacko, 

who misses you, although he knows you’re not far off. 

P. S. I am finding the girl a place. 

P. P. S. I suppose you don’t remember where my flannel 
collars are. 

John Blunt folded the letter, placed it in an envelope, 
and sealed it. He addressed it Mother , and in the right- 
hand corner drew with diligence a square about the size 
of a postage stamp. In the square he put three little 
crosses like the kisses children make, and his tongue 
withdrew from his cheek. 

Next he lit a candle, and burned the letter, watching 
it fade into spirit and ashes with steady eyes. 

Then he began to whistle. 

The Unspeakable Blunt was by no means unhappy 
this morning. 


IX 


JOHN BLUNT GOES TO CHURCH 

Taking his knapsack from a peg on the door, John 
Blunt threw into it a little volume of Wordsworth and 
some sticks of chocolate. 

Then he crossed the passage and peeped into the 
kitchen. 

The dark woman was asleep in a rocking-chair by the 
fire, Pip curled and gray in her lap. 

As he looked at her, his eyes were full of humour and 
contrition, baffling each other. 

He rattled the handle. 

The woman opened one eye at him. 

“Missus!” called John Blunt softly. “I shouldn’t 
have d d you yesterday.” 

He stood before her, abashed. 

The woman opened the other eye stolidly and blinked. 
It was clear that she didn’t know what the other was 
talking about, and it was equally clear that the other 
was glad. 

“Boil me some milk and put it in a bottle,” he coaxed, 
“there’s a good gal. I shan’t be back for lunch.” 

The woman rocked to and fro, the brass toes of her 
clogs shining. 

“A got no milk,” she said. 

64 


JOHN BLUNT GOES TO CHURCH 


65 


The softness died out of the other’s face. 

“I told you yesterday particularly,” he began savagely, 
and brought up short. 

A brown stone bottle stood on the dresser by his side. 
He threw it into his knapsack. 

“Never mind,” he said grimly. “This’ll do.” 

The woman leapt clumsily to her feet, rolling Pip on to 
the floor. 

“Gie it back!” she cried, savage as himself. “That’s 
ma Sunday a-ale.” 

“I don’t think it is,” mocked John Blunt. “A think 
it’s ma Sunday a-ale.” He seized a meat pie and 
threw it after the bottle. “And there’s ma Sunday 
dinner.” 

The woman clacked across the paved kitchen toward 
him, her face dead and dark, and lips turned in. 

The great man waited her silently, his beard on his 
chest, and laughing eyes holding hers. 

She halted, heaving. 

Pip walked across the kitchen, his claws ticking on 
the stones, and humped against John Blunt’s leg. 

He bent and scratched the cat’s head. 

“Pip, Pip, Pip!” he cooed; and the cat purred like 
water on the boil. 

The woman trembled and growled; and John Blunt 
went out, chuckling. 

Hannah Fell rolled after him. 

“When art thou goin’?” she muttered. “There’s 
folks want the rooms.” 

“I’m not going, sweetheart,” said John Blunt. “I’ve 
come to stay.” 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


The church bells ding-donged as the blue-shirted figure 
marched down the road, hitching his knapsack. 

His coat was on his arm, and the sun shone on his 
bare head. 

Harebells, blue as his shirt, sprinkled the banks on 
either side of him. Two old horses, taking their Sabbath 
rest, stood head to tail in a field by the road side and 
nibbled each other’s withers. 

Women in groups of two or three made toward the 
church, here and there an elderly man with crescent of 
white beard circling a wide-splayed mouth accompany- 
ing them. 

The little church stood high above the road among 
laburnums at the top of a rise. 

Opposite the lych-gate gathered a group of young 
men, leaning against the walls of a barn, smoking 
cigarettes, and watching the women, old men, and 
children enter. 

As John Blunt approached, a brougham passed him 
with flashing wheels and stopped at the lych-gate. 

A girl in white clouded with mists of blue descended, 
one slight foot and ankle searching the ground. 

Behind her came a tall and powerful woman, the moon- 
shine glinting in her dark hair. There was a touch of 
the masculine in her dress, so plain it was; and a horsey 
something about her neat and beautifully plaited hair. 
Her skirt was rather short, her shoes broad in the heel 
and square at the toe. And she carried a stick. 

Lady Florence Brackenhurst prided herself on being a 
plain person. She was fond of affirming that she stood 
no nonsense and couldn’t abide sentiment. A proud face, 


JOHN BLUNT GOES TO CHURCH 


67 


powerful, and by no means ignoble, if a trifle hard. 
Face and figure indeed somewhat clashed; the one was 
masterful, will in every line of it; while the large and 
rounded comeliness of the other suggested Love and 
mothering womanhood. 

God, it seemed, had meant her for one purpose; and 
she had destined herself for another. Therefore there was 
a touch of discord in her face, even of discontent, as of 
one who has struggled against fate and prevailed — to 
her own undoing and ultimate mute regret. The Love 
within her had turned to Will, souring somewhat in the 
process. Made to be a mother, she had chosen to be a 
Master. Now she was suffering the inevitable doom 
of the Wilful who prevail. 

Children of her own she had none: for she had passed 
the climacteric of life unmated. For a quarter of a 
century she had made of her Will a wall; and over that 
wall no chance wind had blown the pollen to fertilize this 
always beautiful flower. The Seed of the Future, which 
lay dormant in her treasury, would perish now with her. 
She was the grave of the children whose mother she 
should have been; and the sense of it gave a touch of 
unconscious tragedy to her autumn maidenhood. 

Standing in the road beside the girl in white, who drew 
love as the arabis in April draws the bee, she seemed 
sombrely resigned to the fate she had imposed upon her- 
self. 

Will she had chosen; will she would be. And her 
inistake, if a mistake it had proved, she would confess 
to no one — least of all to herself. 

As the carriage turned round, the autumn lady saw the 


68 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


group of young men gathered against the barn across 
the road, and took a step toward them. 

They stood up sheepishly and touched their hats. 

“Now then, you young men!” she called in deep, 
resonant voice. “ If you won’t come to church yourselves 
as your fathers do, at least don’t keep hanging about 
the gate like this. This is God’s House: it isn’t a beer 
house. I wonder how often I’ve spoken to you about 
this. Tom, George, Albert, you ought to know better. 
Come! Be off with you!” 

She shoo’d them away as a farmer’s wife shoos away 
marauding chickens. 

The youths slouched sullenly off, nudging one another 
surreptitiously, and giggling to show they weren’t afraid. 

The girl in white and mists of blue had entered the 
lych-gate and was talking to the tall, red-faced old 
parson who stood in cassock and mortar-board beneath 
a lamp, shaking hands with his flock as they passed him. 

Lady Florence joined them, limping a little on a stick: 
for she had fallen a week back when otter hunting in 
the Wart. 

“Really these young men nowadays!” she cried in a 
voice not without a certain richness. “I shall have to 
take to shutting the reading room on Sundays, I see, 
Mr. Lloyd. I will get them to church. You ought to 
go and drive them in.” 

“They say I drive ’em out,” said the old parson, slow 
and grim. 

Rachel was stealing quiet as a cloud toward the porch. 
She moved amid the village maidens like a fawn among 
heifers, so fine she seemed amid their thickness. As 


JOHN BLUNT GOES TO CHURCH 


she passed, they threw shy swift bird-glances at this 
girl so like themselves, and so unlike; and she threw them 
back, shy as they were, as innocently curious, wishing to 
be friends and afraid to speak. And there was a sweet 
natural humility about the droop of her shoulders and the 
poise of her dark head as she passed through them, a girl 
amid her kind, the smile that dare not break brimming 
in her eyes, which touched to tenderness the face of the 
shaggy man in the blue shirt peering at her through the 
lych-gate. 

In the dark of the porch the girl turned, the sun upon 
her, and saw him. 

She smiled suddenly, sweetly; and then blushed 
crimson. 

Lady Florence, joining her, turned and saw the rough 
blue-shirted figure framed in the gate. 

She stared. 

“Who is that person, Rachel ?” she asked in her loud 
voice, a touch of harshness in it; and led the way in. 

John Blunt passed through the lych-gate and drifted 
slowly up the path, his eyes on the white figure moving 
now against stained windows in the dimness of the 
church. 

It was as though he were being drawn. 

That strange sweetness and peace had stolen over his 
face again and made dreams in his eyes. There was 
something of the quiet of the great hills at evening about 
him. 

The old man in the cassock under the lamp lifted his 
weathered face and peered grimly through his spectacles 


70 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


at the bare-headed man, knapsack on back, and coat on 
arm, drifting toward him. 

“ Good-morning,” he said, and held out his hand. 

“Good-morning,” said John Blunt absently. 

“Are you going to join us?” 

“I suppose so,” still in dreams. 

“Won’t you put on your coat then?” 

“If you like.” 

“And your knapsack you could leave in the porch.” 

The other seemed to wake. 

“Very well,” he grunted. “Only I’ll sit somewhere 
where I can keep an eye on it.” 

“We aren’t thieves in this parish,” said the parson, 
his eye a trifle grimmer. 

“It’s got beer in it,” explained John Blunt and 
passed in. 

He took his seat by the door. 

Two little ginger-haired boys in the pew in front 
turned round to stare. 

John Blunt scowled at them; then, as they still stared, 
leaning reluctantly forward, he bowed his head in his 
hands and counted slowly beneath his breath: 

One — two — three — four — five — six — seven — eight. 

At the number eight he said Amen, loud enough for 
the little boys to hear, and sitting back, banged his head 
against a projecting money box. 

The church was three parts empty. 

A few girls sat in the chancel as choristers, an old 
labouring man or two in the side-aisle, and at the back 
of the church about the font a flock of school-children, 


JOHN BLUNT GOES TO CHURCH 


71 


a woman herding them, a pale-faced footman, and a pew- 
ful of maids from the Hall. 

In the body of the church were women, women, women; 
young, old, and middle-aged; women shabby, women 
semi-smart, women in sober silks, and women in shining 
satins — in all maybe two score of them strewn sparsely 
up and down in half as many pews. 

They seemed arranged in order of dress and social 
importance: the daughters of farmers at the back; half- 
way up the housekeeper and higher servants from the 
Hall; in front of them the handful of maiden ladies who 
constitute the Society of English village life; and in the 
foremost pew the richest person there — the Lady from 
the Hall, and her girl companion. 

The ordering of the church seemed to be in exact 
contradiction to the orders of the founder of it, 
who looked down with grave surprise from the east 
window. 

The girl in the front pew appeared to be aware of it. 
Her shoulders drooped and her head was down as 
though she could not face the eyes of Him she had come 
to worship. 

Against the forget-me-not blue of her hat, her dark 
hair clustered grape-like. John Blunt’s eyes rested on 
that mist of blue floating in the air across the heads of 
the people. He leaned back with his arms folded and 
seemed to drink in calm and comfort through his 
eyes. 

The two little boys in front giggled and nudged each 
other. The organ began to hum. The old man in the 
cassock, robed now in white splashed with red and gold, 


72 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


tramped up the aisle singing with his nose in the air and 
considerable gusto, 

Hark, the herald angels sing! 

The people rose; and John Blunt no longer able to 
see the pool of forget-me-nots stirring across the valley 
rose too. 

For some time there was a vague humming of the organ 
and chaunting of voices in his ear. He rose up, sat down, 
and knelt as did those about him. Then there was silence. 
The old man in white stood up above the sitting people 
and read in sing-song, mechanical voice a tale about 
Nebuchadnezzar and Jehoiachim. 

Then the people rose once more like a forest all about 
him and the old man in white was lost to view; but the 
pool of forget-me-nots floating across the valley stirred 
his eyes, stirring themselves. 

Once the voice of the old man came humming in upon 
his dreams: 

Um-m-m- endue Thy um-m- ministers with righteousness. 
And once he found himself singing, 

'Oh, for the pearly gates of heaven! 

Oh, for the golden floor! 

One of the little boys in front, thumbing a gilt-edged 
book with dirty nails, turned and grinned at him. 

John Blunt stopped singing and scowled at him, and 
the little boy turned away with a whimper. 

Then they all sat down with a noise. 

John Blunt leaned comfortably back, his eyes on the 
pool of forget-me-nots floating across the valley, still 
now and broadcast like a mighty leaf. 

The man in white climbed a little stair and stood in a 


JOHN BLUNT GOES TO CHURCH 


73 


box above the people and began in a sing-song and 
melancholy voice to hum about the Church and how 
thankful they ought all to be to it. 

The pool of forget-me-nots across the valley 
stirred. The face beneath it lifted to the man in the 
box; and John Blunt shifted a little to catch the 
pale crescent of it through the intervening thicket of 
heads. 

The face turned again as though disappointed; and he 
could see the dark hair clustered beneath the blue, 
and a gleam of neck, curl- wreathed, as the girl bowed 
her head. 

The man in white still hummed mechanically in his 
box, and a motor on the hill outside hummed as it were 
response. 

The ginger-haired boys craned to see; and John 
Blunt leaning forward put a great hand on each 
bristly little head and banged them gently 
together. 

Then with the ghost of a grin creeping about his shaggy 
mouth, he leaned farback and peered through the open 
door to watch a chocolate motor puff, jerk, and palpitate 
upon the hill. 

The mechanical voice in the box was clearly running 
down. 

“And last of all it stands beside our graves when at 
last we have the joy to be taken from this — u-m-m-m 
sinful and wicked world.” 

The pool of forget-me-nots shook and stirred as 
in a laughing wind. John Blunt smiled. The gin- 
ger-haired boys grinned in his face. The man in 


74 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


the box turned his back upon the people, hummed 
something in a louder voice, and then descended the 
stairs. 

Another man, this one in black, came down the aisle 
toward him, dangling an ornate money bag; and John 
Blunt went out into the porch. 


X 


THE OLD MAN WHO ENDED IN HIMSELF 

Outside the lych-gate he paused and looked at his 
watch. 

A woman came to a cottage door and called smiling 
to her man in the road. 

The man, grinning too, knocked out his pipe, and say- 
ing to his mate, 

“Sunday dinner,” turned in. 

John Blunt watched him. Then he untied the string 
of his knapsack and fished out a meat pie and a stone 
bottle of ale. 

On the low wall opposite, a lad was lying, his back 
against a barn, reading. 

John Blunt crossed to him. 

“Want to earn a tanner?” he asked. 

“Not partic’lar,” said the lad, never looking up. 

“Then take these two up to Wart Cottage to Mrs. Fell — 
with John Blunt’s compliments. Here you are. Runnow.” 

The boy set off at a lolling walk. 

“I said run!” cried John Blunt after him. 

“A willna run then,” said the lad. “Sitha!” 

The people were trickling out of church through the lych- 
gate, and a rich voice, loud and offensive, came down the 
road: 


75 


76 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“There’s that man!” 

John Blunt slung his knapsack on his back. 

“He hasn’t got a coat or a hat, and a pedlar’s pack on 
his back!” came the deep voice, vibrating battle. 

John Blunt turned. 

“I can hear you!” he called genially. 

The girl in white turned away. The challenging lady 
stared down the road; and there was something splendid 
as of a roused animal about her. 

“Has he come to church in that get up?” she asked 
the heavens, her voice growing harsher. 

“Yes, he has,” answered John Blunt, pert as a boy 
cheeking his mother, and thoroughly enjoying himself. 

“Then all I say is more shame to him!” squealed the 
lady, shrill now, rapped the road with her stick, and 
limped rapidly after the girl in white. 

“Rachel, my dear, where do you pick up these people? ” 
she asked in flagrantly offensive voice. 

John Blunt, twinkling still, turned his back upon the 
hills and tramped down the road. 

“Is this the way to the sea?” he asked of a passing 
countryman. 

“Aye. T’sea ligs yon road.” 

The road rose before him to span the railway. On the 
bridge he paused and looked down on the little station 
beneath, and the narrow line circling round the bay, 
across an estuary, and passing out of sight under Dark 
Coombe. 

The river, curlew-haunted, wound through flats toward 
an estuary, sand-hills, white in the sun, banking it on the 


OLD MAN WHO ENDED IN HIMSELF 77 


seaward side; the last of them rising bluff and fortress- 
like against the gleam of water where the river broadened 
to the sea. 

The railway made a rough border line between the 
cultivated land and the wilderness. 

On the seaward side were yet a few fields, a lonely 
cottage or two amid sweet peas, or a rare whitewashed 
farm, that seemed to mark the outpost line of man's 
advance. 

Past one such whitewashed farm, the hollyhocks tall 
about the door, and one tiny pane in each leaded window 
open to the sun, the road took the man with the knap- 
sack on his back. 

He paused to read a name and date carved on the stone 
lintel 

James Rigg. A. D. 1677. 

Then he peeped into the living room. 

It was bare, clean, austere, with a few horse-hair chairs 
and a paved floor. Through a door he caught a peep 
of green orchard and fowls scratching. 

In a dark out-house hard by a great ungainly woman 
in clogs, a cloth cap set upon her untidy hair, was 
planting ferns in a tub. 

“Who lives here?” he asked of her. 

“James Rigg,” came the answer. 

And John Blunt knew that this was the hold of one 
of those Cumberland statesmen, whose race have for 
centuries kept their grip and left their mark upon the 
same patch of earth as it swung through sun and shadow; 
begetting where they were begot, ploughing the same 
fields, harvesting in the same barns, tramping the same 


78 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


roads, seeing the same hills, sleeping in the same beds, 
dying in the same room their eyes on the same dark 
spot on the wall, and turning again to earth amid 
the bones of the men and women from whose bones 
they sprang. 

The ungainly woman in the cap looked at the man 
gazing up at the lintel. 

“He’s the last of ’em, is ma master,” she volunteered. 
“He’s an owd bachelor. A’m nobbut a servant.” 

A clock struck in the parlour, and woke a hen to pleas- 
ant murmurings and memories. 

John Blunt heard it out; then passed on thoughtfully. 

The banks of the lane were low now and topped with 
bracken telling of no-man’s-land near by. 

Foxgloves lifted tall spires upon them, and harebells 
trembled amid patches of gorse. 

At a deep and tiny rivulet the meadows ceased. 

Thereafter the ground was rough and rush-grown in 
marshy spots. 

A heron fishing in a pool flapped sombrely away with 
snake-like neck. The road lifted gently to a gate that 
marked the uttermost boundary of man’s dominion. 

John Blunt leaned over the gate and sniffed. 

Before him lay the sand-hills; and across them at 
the foot of the falling road half a mile away glimmered 
the sea. 

He passed through the gate, and shut it behind him 
with a slow smile. 

He was in the Wilderness again, his native home, 
elemental man amid the elements he loved. 


OLD MAN WHO ENDED IN HIMSELF 79 


He felt South African, to use the term he had coined 
long ago for use by his mother and himself. 

Turning his face seaward, he filled his lungs with a 
deep, indrawing breath, swinging his arms upward and 
backward with a deliberate mighty movement, and ex- 
haled slowly. 

From far away came a murmur and rustle as of a vast 
marching host invisible, rising, falling, failing never. 

John Blunt hearkened with bowed head: and there 
came surging in upon his mind the billowy lines of a poet 
of Democracy: 

What is this the sound and rumcfur, what is this that all 
men hear ? 

Like the wind in hollow valleys when the storm is drawing 
near, 

Like the rolling on of Ocean in the eventide of fear — 

’Tis the People marching on./ 

He seemed to hear the poet singing them, and nodded 
as he listened. Then he lifted his eyes. They fell upon 
a notice-board at the roadside. 

This Warren is Private Property. No dogs allowed. 

By order. 

Lady Florence Brackenhurst, 

Scar Hall. 

He took the road that ran now unfenced through rushes 
and sandy hillocks brown with fading heather. 

There was no sign or sound of man, but on his left over 
the sand-hills rose a great crying of sea gulls. 

Cows lay by the roadside among the rushes, chewing the 
cud with dewy, lifted muzzles. They saw and yet did 
not see him, as he paused to look at them, their accepted 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


80 

overlord once their enemy, the sight and scent of whom, 
as they inhaled him with blowing nostrils through the 
thicket, had sent them scampering with streaming tails, 
their calves behind them, and the dogs of war baying at 
their heels. Then they had been rough galloping creatures 
with wild eyes and the lean flanks that come from hard 
living: swift of foot and formidable when put to push of 
horn in defence of life or calf. Fat now, comfortable, 
conservative, prosperous, orthodox and bourgeoise, 
with abundant udders and soft calm eyes, after hundreds 
of centuries of mild and patient slavery, man their 
master and their servant to wait upon them, to take the 
romance and misery from their lives, and supply their 
needs that they in turn might supply his, they ignored 
his presence or mildly resented it. 

John Blunt turned off the road and stood among a sea 
of sand-hills, tossing and turbulent and crested with rush 
grass as with green spray. 

Rabbits bounced before him, bounced, and bounced. 
White scuts flicked down burrows; brown backs humped; 
black eyes watched. Now a spurt and patter of soft 
feet as he topped a shaggy crest, and then a scurry of 
furry brown things flashing down the sandy bottom and 
up the far slope, each making straight for its own home, 
regardless of nearer refuge; habit and the sense of property 
constraining them. 

John Blunt stood with his hands thrust in his pockets, 
laughing deep laughter under the hollow sky, as he 
watched them. 

The School-boy rose up riotously from his deeps, 


OLD MAN WHO ENDED IN HIMSELF 81 

tempted forth by the school-boy bunnies to come and 
play with them. 

One stayed, spear-eared and alert, at the mouth of a 
burrow, watching him out of black eyes. 

The great gray man ran at it with outspread arms, 
pretending he was an eagle on the swoop. 

The rabbit whisked out of sight with a flash of scorn- 
ful tail. 

The bearded Boy strolled on, laughing to himself, and 
careful so to plant his great boots as not to crush the tiny 
pansies that strewed the way. 

Joy was in his heart; Youth in his limbs. Rushing a 
crest that bristled pale green against the sky he saw the 
sea splashing beneath him and rimmed with pebbles, 
and was about to hail it with a shout when he observed 
sitting upon a wooden breakwater a tall old man in a 
black wide-awake. 

The great sky arched above him, the great sea shim- 
mered beyond. A sea gull floated overhead, calling 
desolately; and besides there was no living soul on the 
shore that stretched away for miles on either hand. 

The old man sat with his back rather bowed and picked 
at a strip of seaweed in his hand. 

The laughter died out of John Blunt’s heart. He be- 
came middle-aged again and gray. 

Poor old boy ! how lonely he looked. 

John Blunt descended the sand-hills and crunched 
across the beach toward the solitary figure. The old 
man did not hear him. He sat perched like a great bird, 
high shouldered and thin limbed, the fingers that played 
with the ribbon seaweed emerging like brown claws from 


82 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


the black mittens he wore. With his great beak, round 
shoulders, and drooping air, he looked like a moulting 
albatross. 

“Are you James Rigg? ,, asked John Blunt, stopping 
before him. 

The old man made no answer, staring earth-ward; and 
it was clear that the channels between his soul and the 
outer world were closing up. 

Suddenly however he became aware of feet and gray 
stockings planted before him. 

Lifting a great bird beak and hollow brown eyes, he 
piped in thin, parrot voice, 

“Eh! A’m rather hard o’hearin’.” 

John Blunt sat down beside him on the breakwater. 

“A’m James Rigg,” squeaked the old man. “A 
haven’t the full use o’ ma hearin’.” 

The other made no answer. 

The two men sat side by side on the breakwater, the 
wind blowing on them, the water splashing hard by; and 
neither spoke. 

The old man’s thighs were thin and hollow, his knees 
showing gnarled and knotted at the end of them. His 
scanty white beard blew in the wind, and his thin claw- 
hands picked at the brown ribbon weed. He breathed 
asthmatically, coughed, and spat. 

A quiet like a cloud drifted across the heart of John 
Blunt. 

For a long time neither spoke or stirred. 

Then the old man quavered: 

“Breathin’s rather bad.” 

“Hard luck,” muttered the other. 


OLD MAN WHO ENDED IN HIMSELF 83 


No other words passed between them. 

At length the old man gathered himself to go. 

“A reck’n A’d best be trottin’ home,” he piped. “Good- 
day.” 

He rose on tall thin legs, and wavered shadow-like 
in the wind. John Blunt rose too. 

He took the other’s black-mittened hand in his; and 
his eyes sought the old man’s, over which were deep, dark 
hollows, the shape of a crescent moon. 

Something in his look spoke to the old man’s heart. 

“Thank ye,” he squeaked. “The same to you. 
Happen we’ll meet again if ye’re staying at Scar. A 
coom here most days and set a bit.” 

He walked actively away, his shoulders round, and 
great bird-beak, white framed, peeping to left and right. 

John Blunt watched him go, this old man who ended 
in himself. Then he tramped across to the sand-hills 
and arranged himself comfortably in a little bay upon 
the seaward side. 

Packing his knapsack underneath his head, he lay 
upon his back, munching chocolate thoughtfully. Then 
he opened his Wordsworth and began to read “Resolution 
and Independence.” 

Soon he put the book down, and lying on his back 
watched the blue and white cloud-drift overhead. 

That old man had touched his aching nerve; and the 
hollow in his heart was making itself felt again. 

Poor old boy! Somehow he had missed his chance, 
no doubt. 

Poor old boy! 


XI 


THE SAND-HILLS 

It was three o’clock when he stood again on the 
bristling crest of the sand-hills. 

Away to the South he could see the square-topped 
fortress hill which crowned the miniature range at the 
mouth of the estuary. 

He made toward it over billowy hillocks, waving green 
or white about him. 

Here the rush grass was sparsely sprinkled, here thick 
as a mane; and here again were desert patches marked 
only with soft pads and the clear imprint of seabirds. 

Now he was walking along a sharp crest, beneath him 
a naked crater of sand. On his left the land stretched 
away flat and brown and rushy to the estuary where the 
river gleamed among wet sands, Dark Coombe looming 
beyond. 

The sweep of the crest led him back toward the shore. 
As he stood above it once again he paused. 

In the sea, a hundred yards or more away, a boy was 
bathing. 

John Blunt watched him with a frown. 

“Little rotter!” he grunted, for the boy was wearing a 
bathing dress — here in the heart of the wilderness, 
miles away from man, woman, or human habitation. 

84 


THE SAND-HILLS 


85 


And what an ass of a boy! 

He ran to and fro in the shallows splashing; he skipped 
and laughed and clutched himself; he laboured along on 
hands and knees in a foot of water, the ripples breaking 
over him, apparently playing he was a dog; he rolled 
in the tide, and sat down in it, splashing delicately with 
his hands, like a baby in a bath, and singing to himself. 

Amusement on John Blunt’s face turned to resentment, 
and that again to indignation. 

This was young England! 

All the boy in him revolted against this unboyish 
conduct. 

“Hi! you! stop playing the fool and swim properly!” 
he bawled at last. “Sitting and splashing in ten inches 
o’ water! You’ll never grow to be a man.” 

The boy stopped singing and turned a scared face. 

He rose to his knees, then sank again hurriedly, and 
hid in the water like a moor hen, his white face floating 
lily-like upon the surface. 

“Little ass,” grinned John Blunt. “Believe he’s funky,” 
and turned away. 

In a hollow behind the sand-hill he came on the boy’s 
clothes, and poked them with his stick contemptuously. 

What a lot the boy had! 

Funks were always like that; he had noticed it at 
school. 

And what on earth was this arrangement? 

He picked it up with eyes in which scorn and merri- 
ment clashed. 

Then his glance fell on a straw bag and a little round 
hat with a partridge’s feather in it. 


86 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


His mouth opened; and his tongue shot out. He said, 
“O Lor!” and it was his turn to be afraid. 

From the seaward side there came the tinkle of peb- 
bles, and the scramble of light feet. 

Some one was climbing up the sand-hills from the shore. 
John Blunt could hear a little frightened panting as of a 
creature hard-pressed and a long-drawn whimpering, 
“Oh!” 

For one second he paused like a school-boy caught 
cribbing. 

Then he took to his heels and plunged down the sand 
drift, his feet making huge holes at each stride. 

John Blunt ran as twenty years ago he had once run 
on the banks of the Limpopo with an old bull-rhino on 
his heels. 

As he disappeared round a hairy spur, he caught a half 
glimpse of a little figure in a wet and clinging dress, 
crouching above a heap of clothes. 

Scared black eyes met his, the horror in them; and a 
fainting voice panted, 

“I’m a girl, please.” 

“All right,” he called. “I’m going away,” and dis- 
appeared, the light coming and going in his eyes, and 
an abashed grin breaking about his face. 

He walked now along the shore, the sand-hillsswelling 
pale green and hairy on his left. 

The lonely man was walking into loneliness and grow- 
ing always more lonely as he went. 

His face was dark, and the hollow at his heart ached 
and ached. 


THE SAND-HILLS 


87 


The blue-backed mussel shells, lying in millions at his 
side, were his only companions. The sand all about him 
was imprinted with spectre broad-arrows; and he was 
walking toward the inarticulate calling of sea birds, 
dreadful and discordant like the voices of the unhappy 
dead. 

An oyster catcher flew swiftly with a piping whistle 
overhead. A young gull that could barely flutter made 
its staggering way back to the shelter of the sand-hills 
before the coming of the ominous giant who stayed 
his march to let it go. 

A few hundred yards in front a host of oyster catchers 
perched along the edge of the tide like up-ended mussels; 
and beyond them and apart, sentinel they too beside the 
water, a group of gray terns gathered. 

As he approached, the host rose like a puff of silver and 
wheeled overhead. The sky was loud with their re- 
sentment. They screamed, piped, floated, and swooped, 
above the intruder. He walked beneath wings. The 
blue heavens were flecked white as with snow flakes. His 
eyes were full of angel forms, his ears of discord. 

And the discord outside himself seemed to make a 
harmony with the discord in his heart. 

That old man — that old man who ended in himself ! 

As he passed on through the silvery storm of birds, 
they settled again behind him to renew their lonely watch 
by the great waters; and their clamour subsided. 

Now he was nearing the square-topped hill that bluffed 
out into the sand like a fortress at the mouth of the 
estuary. 

A blowing mist shrouded the sky and made it pure and 


88 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


pale as turquoise; the sands gleamed like opal; and 
the wind-driven sand-hills shimmered ghostly green on 
his left. 

Once the mist thickened and a great gloom darkened 
the sun, which poured down in silver pools on the sea. 

Then the gloom glowed. 

It was like the opening and shutting of an eye; and John 
Blunt’s face gloomed and glowed in sympathy as the 
eye shut or opened. 

Now he crossed a strip of slaty shingle and approached 
the square-topped hill that had always been his goal. 

It lay like a great Sphinx with hairy crest, its blind 
face seaward, and bare brown sides flowing smoothly 
up from the shore toward its shaggy summit, where 
dark strata showed as ribs through the loose sand. Bold 
and bluffing, it thrust out into the shore as though 
guarding the estuary, firm-footed against assault. There 
was a certain noble steadfastness about the weathered face 
and wind-blown crest that, standing out conspicuous 
above the level of the crowd, had borne for centuries 
the worst that wind whipping across the sea, and lashes 
of snow, and storms of icy spray, could do, which seemed 
to hold the eyes of the man gazing up at it. 

A great while John Blunt stood brooding on the 
storm-beaten fortress, its crest hairy against the misty 
blue: then he lay down in the soft sand at its feet looking 
out over the estuary toward Dark Coombe beyond. 

Now and then a desolate crying of sea birds rose from 
the shore behind him, and made the loneliness more 
lonely. 

A long time he lay thus with brooding eyes, munching 


THE SAND-HILLS 


89 


his thoughts; and the tides of darkness and desolation 
crept over his face again. He turned up his coat collar 
and rested on his side, with frowning brows, staring 
out over the sand-waste before him. 

Gray sky; gray sea; gray eyes reflecting them; and a 
gray heart within. 

That heart and the hollow in it? — the hollow that 
ached and ached? 

Would it never again be filled? 

Would it never again brim with Love? — its grand, 
its only need? 

He was fifty odd — gray, grim, something of an out- 
law, almost an Ishmael. 

What hope was there for him? — this side the Great 
Divide at all events. 

That old man sitting on the breakwater picking sea- 
weed and listening to the tide ... 

That old man who ended in himself . . . 

That old man who had missed his chance . . . 

John Blunt saw him again rise beneath the gray and 
totter back to the old home, where was no woman, 
no voice of children, and no love. 

The Unspeakable Blunt rolled over and lay face down- 
ward on the sand, his arms wide as one crucified. 

Then he lifted his head and listened. 

Behind him was the gurgle of voices, murmuring and 
mysterious, near yet far. 

There was no soul in sight; and he knew the voices 
for what they were. 

They came to him borne upon the wind, rippling, 


90 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


flowing, falling; and the sound of them seemed to 
comfort him. 

He rose to his knees; and the strain left his face. 

It was like a flood of spirits drifting by invisible, and 
talking beautifully together as they went. He could not 
hear what they were saying and did not need to. The 
music of their voices, and the sense and certainty of 
their presence, was enough for him. Once they came 
so near that he lifted his head, expecting almost to behold 
a procession of angel presences in white robes and Botti- 
celli-like loveliness, flowing by in the heavens. 

The pleasure deepened in his eyes and grew upon his 
face, softening it. He kneeled on the sand, his face 
uplifted to the heavens, his arms outspread as though for 
a gift, listening with bowed head. 

Then above the ripple of spirit voices there floated 
down to him from on high, like a blossom borne upon the 
tide, another voice; rich of earth, rippling too, pure as 
a stream, which chuckled shyly, 

“Hullo!” 


XII 


THE SAND-HILLS 

He looked up into blue and white cloud-drift: for the 
storm had passed and the sun was shining down again. 

A girl was standing on the hairy crest above him, bare- 
headed against the sky. She was in a white jersey, 
belted about the waist; and the long grass shrouded her 
feet. The sun was in her eyes, and she bowed her 
head to it. 

She stood like the Spirit of Joy in the heavens above 
him, clothed about with sun and wind. 

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” he said deeply. 

Her eyes shone down on him; her white skirt blew 
against her knees; and her hands were clasped 
behind her. 

“Were you the man?” she asked, shy and smiling. 

He nodded, great-bearded and bashful. 

“Well, you couldn’t help it,” she said encouragingly, 
and added — “I shouldn’t have minded if I’d known it 
was you.” 

She was retreating as it were into her own dark deeps 
to peep forth, innocently tempting him to follow; and 
follow he did, and follow. 

How warm she was, how sweet, how most mysterious! 

And the gleam of her dark eyes, the rippling pur-r-r 
91 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


of her voice, laughter in it and love, drew him as the 
mother draws the toddling child. 

His shyness left him. 

He came a step nearer. His face was uplifted to hers 
high in the heaven above him, and his voice was strangely 
deep and tender as he said: 

“Were you frightened?” 

She shuddered, laughing. 

“ O-o-o-h ! — When I saw those great footmarks in 
the sand beside my clothes . . . O-o-o-h!” Her 

eyes laughed in the sun. “ I thought he might be hiding, 
waiting to spring on me. I felt like a rabbit and a stoat 
— that sort of feel. Then you called out. 

And I was all right.” 

“How did you know?” 

He stood beneath her, as one worshipping. His voice 
was absent and eyes dreamy, as though he saw the soul 
behind her body, and because he was in touch with it 
could brush aside the veil of words. 

“I knew,” she nodded in that wise child way of hers. 
“I knew by your voice. Nice many it said.” 

He drew into himself and dropped his eyes. The 
school-boy made himself apparent again. 

She saw it and smiled down on him. 

“It was good of you to call. . . . You know they 

say that in old days the Scots used to come across in their 
boats from over there and raid this coast and take the 
Cumbrian women for their wives. That’s how I felt.” 

“Sorry I gave you a bad time,” growled John Blunt. 

“Well, you see it was part guilty conscience. It’s 
the first time I’ve ever bathed alone. I’m not allowed 


THE SAND-HILLS 


to really. Usually I take my cousin or my maid; and 
they sit on the sand-hills close by and watch and ward. 
But there’s never anybody about so far out as this, and 
it was Sunday, and one thing and another. See? — 
Cock-a-doodle-doo ! ” 

Slowly he began to climb toward her, plodding through 
the sand that lay in loose drifts at the foot of the hills. 

“You can’t get up there,” cried the girl. “You must 
come up by his tail as I did. See — here!” 

He followed her pointing finger and skirted the base of 
the hill. A long, low sweep of naked sand stretched like 
a dragon’s tail behind it, joining it to the other sand-hills. 

“Those are my feet — follow them.” 

Her footmarks, deep and dark and crumbling in the 
sand, wound up the knobby side. He followed them 
deliberately, placing his feet in her steps, sheering up 
against the steep; slipping, sliding, halting here and 
there on a firm foothold; and clasping the brown withered 
grass that bound the hill toward the summit. 

“Here!” she cried, standing above him, white against 
the blue, the rush grass to her knees, and stretched out 
her hand. 

He took it, warm and strong in his. 

“Pull-y, haul-y!” cried the merry voice above him, 
and with a sprawl he was on his knees beside her. 

Then for the first time he saw that she was barefooted. 

For a second he stayed upon his hands and knees 
staring at the pearly pink feet so close to his lips. Then 
he snatched his eyes away. 

She stood beside him in purest white, the wind about 
her, the sun upon her. 


94 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


The summit of the hill was little bigger than 
the bridge of a ship, hollow in the middle, and hairy 
all over. 

In the hollow was a basket, a towel, a little pair of 
shoes, stuffed with stockings, and a green hat with a 
partridge’s feather stuck in it. 

Above the hollow the two stood together, brushing 
shoulders under the sky; the wind upon them, the shore 
beneath, and never another living soul for miles. 

The sun was going down; and the sea was going out. 

The sound of it, sweet and low, came to the ears of 
the man upon the summit of the hill. 

He began to hum and rumble musically to himself. 

“Isn’t he a beauty, our little hill?” said the girl, shining 
and smiling at his side. “I call him Majuba.” 

She pronounced the word “Majoopa”as a child might do. 

“Majoopa,” repeated the man, mocking her tenderly. 
“I can see Majoopa from my bedroom window.” 

“Oh, you can see him from everywhere!” cried the 
girl. “He stands out like a little fortress — so grim and 
good and faithful watch-doggy. He’s wonderful. I 
love him.” 

She looked out over the sea, the sun in her eyes; the 
wind caressing her hair, face, and lissome young body, 
and her skirt blowing about her. 

“That’s the Isle of Man opposite .... There, 
that dim line — and over there the hills of Scotland 
where the men came from for the women.” 

The girl chuckled up at him. She was like a child, 
as bold as she was shy, and beautifully confident in 
innocence. 


THE SAND-HILLS 


95 


The sweet instincts of her opening womanhood told her 
she could trust him, and told her aright. This great man 
had long mastered himself; and the sense of it passed 
from him to her impressionable soul down a myriad 
invisible highways like the fragrance of roses in a dewy 
dawn. She was sure of herself in him, and her heart was 
full of joy because of it. 

“Isn’t it jolly up here, our two selves — like on a 
desert island?” 

Her head was bare; and her wet hair clung to it, show- 
ing its round bird-smoothness and the broad white brow. 
She was fresh, sweet, and tempting as a rain-washed 
apple. 

“Not bad,” he said, nodding. “Not by no means.’ , 

She gleamed up into his face. 

“What’s your name?” 

“Blunt.” 

“Blunt is it, Blunt? — Mine’s Rachel Carmelite.” 

He flung up his head and laughed gloriously. 

The girl at his side began to pirouette. 

“There’s nobody about to see,” she sang. “So, let’s 
be ourselves for once.” 

“All right!” he cried. “Here goes!” 

A madness seized them both. 

They took hands and jigged together like children, 
their eyes leaping and laughing. 

“Dancie! dancie! dancie!” they yelled. 

Then they broke down through laughter. 

“Oh, I say!” panted the girl. “You’re a boy — 
a boy in a beard. How ripping!” 

She sat down in the hollow, her bosom still heaving. 


96 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

and her toes, rosy as a baby’s, peeping from the cloud of 
her skirt. 

“Now, Blunt,” she said, “you go to that end of 
our island and turn your back. There’s a good li’l 
boy.” 

He slouched away obediently and stood with his hands 
in his pockets, looking out over the estuary and whistling 
to give her courage. 

The girl in the hollow slipped on her stockings. 

Once she glanced at the broad, blue-shirted back and 
smiled. 

“Blunt may turn now,” she called at last. 

“Tank you,” he said and came tramping back to her. 
She sat in the hollow, her feet tucked modestly away 
beneath her. 

“Now sit down, and I give you tea out of my leetle 
basket,” she said cosily. 

“And I give you chocolate out of my leetle bag.” 

A rabbit leaped out of a tuft close by. John Blunt 
hurled his knapsack at it. 

“I knew he was there!” he yelled, pursuing. . . . 

“Gone aw-a-a-y! — Tally-ho! forward!” 

The rabbit spurted down the hill side and along the 
smooth, broad tail of the Sphinx. 

John Blunt danced on the crest, brandishing his arms 
and shouting war shouts. 

Then he came trotting busily back to her. 

Rachel rocked to and fro. 

“Boy!” she cried, the tears rolling down her cheeks. 
“Baby! I wish the young men were your age. Now sit 
down and I’ll feed you.” 


THE SAND-HILLS 


97 


He sat down beside her, great-booted and great-kneed, 
his legs lean and sinewy in their gray stockings, his face 
grinning and glowing, and he made a hubble-bubble 
noise in his throat. 

“I lub my grub,” he said, shut his eyes, and opened 
his mouth. 


XIII 


THE SAND-HILLS 

Afterward they stood side by side on the hairy crest 
and looked seaward. 

The sun was going down in mist and the sea shimmered 
beneath it like a shield of bronze. Here and there the 
water gleamed silvery and a white light rimmed the 
horizon. By the edge of the far tide gulls and oyster 
catchers still kept their long vigil. Beneath them the 
sea hushed itself to sleep beyond wet sands as it had done 
since the Beginning. 

A hush had fallen on them. 

“Isn’t it marvellous, the sound of it?” murmured the 
girl in awed voice. “It goes on and on and on for ever.” 
She seemed to be a note in the eternal chord she admired 
so dearly. 

He threw a shy glance at her. 

Infinity was flowing in on him — and he was riding 
heavenward on its waves. 

The girl seemed to be breathing the beauty of earth 
and sea and evening; and he seemed to be breathing her. 

“And then look here!” 

She turned about. Behind them stretched the shining 
flats of the estuary, sea birds floating above them, and 
the river winding through. Across it lay a gaunt rail- 

98 


THE SAND-HILLS 


99 


way bridge, and on the far shore a dishevelled gray vil- 
lage scattered along the water edge. Beyond, in a vast 
encircling rampart, the great hills lifted in dim tumult- 
uous magnificence. 

“Aren’t they wonderful?” murmured the girl. “They 
become such friends, when you know them.” 

“They’re all right,” said John Blunt. 

A smile gathered about her eyes. 

“And now we’ll go to the gullery, and see if we can 
find any baby gulls, shall we?” she said, and packed 
her string bag. 

He took it and plunged whooping down the steep as 
though in seven-leagued boots, his feet making dark 
caverns in the sand. 

“Bravo!” she cried and followed at a little skipping 
run, the dust making clouds about her feet, her arms 
lifting like the wings of a bird, and hovering about her 
eyes and mouth an anxious little smile. 

The tenderness was on his face, as his eyes followed 
her. 

“There!” she panted, bringing up at his feet and 
patting her hair. 

They left the shore and struck in among the sand-hills. 

Sea gulls screaming above them warned them that the 
gullery was near. 

“It’s rather late in the year,” said the girl, “but we 
may find one Look! There’s a nest.” 

Indeed, nests now lay all about them; each a wisp 
of withered rush grass carelessly coiled. There was no 
attempt at concealment or protection. The nests lay 
naked to the sun and to the eye of an enemy, empty all. 


100 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


Here and there were broken egg shells, green-brown and 
spotted. Overhead were dream- wings and discord. 

“Don’t they resent us?” cried the girl. 

A sea gull opening its mouth to scream dropped a silver 
sprat at her feet. She picked it up. 

“There’s a young one!” she cried eagerly. “I’ll see 
if he’ll take this.” 

She walked toward it, calling. The little fluffy brown 
thing ran clumsily away on tall legs from this strange 
fluttering cloud with the rich voice pursuing it. 

The girl chased it like a child, dangling the silver sprat, 
and calling caressingly: 

“Here, baby!” 

John Blunt watched her with a smile. 

“I’ll back the bird,” he chaffed. 

The little creature stumbled over hill and dale, its 
toes catching in the grass, at the toppling run of a child 
uncertain of its feet; now tumbling on its nose and up 
again. 

“Throw it!” suggested John Blunt. 

The girl obeyed. The sprat landed before the fugitive’s 
nose; but the bird paid no heed, stumbling on, intent upon 
escape. 

“Stupid little thing, ’’panted the girl, and raised laugh- 
ing eyes to his. “Now it’s your turn to do something.” 

“What shall I do?” 

“Find a squat baby — that can’t run away.” 

They quartered the ground carefully beneath a storm 
of protest from above. 

“Cooey!” cried John Blunt, pausing great and gray, 
the setting sun on his tumbled hair. 


THE SAND-HILLS 


101 


The girl came swiftly and with eager eyes. 

“Where! — Oh, isn’t it a duck?” 

A little fluffy thing much the colour of the sand squatted 
at John Blunt’s feet. He stood above it great-browed 
and brooding, his huge boots on either side the baby 
bird protecting it. It did not stir or squeak, but sat 
close and apparently calm, its little body panting, its 
round dark eyes watching them. 

The girl bent above it, her hands in her lap, and face 
radiant, the love beams pouring down from her eyes 
upon the little loving thing beneath. 

“Isn’t it cosey and cuddly?” she purred. 

The mother gull, touched to the heart, uttered its agony 
above them, incredulous that any could take other than 
a fatal interest in her darling. 

“All right, mother,” murmured the girl. “We only 
want to love it too.” 

John Blunt bent and stroked the little creature’s back, 
with one huge finger. It never stirred, nor showed 
symptoms of distress. 

John Blunt’s huge hand closed tenderly about it, 
and he gave it to the girl. 

“For you,” he said. 

She took his gift to her bosom with a dark smile. 

It nestled comfortably there, its eyes black and peeping 
above the white hand that curled so lovingly about it. 

The girl caressed her child, holding its little beak 
against her cheek. 

John Blunt watched her with shining eyes. 

“How splendid you’d be with a baby,” he said 
admiringly. 


102 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


She held her treasure tight against her mothering heart. 
“Coo! coo! blessums!” murmured the girl, smiling 
mysteriously. “Did it know she loved it den?” 

She replaced it in the nest : then lifted soft and smiling 
eyes to his. 

“I do love young things; don’t you?” she said shyly. 
“Some,” he answered with averted eyes. 


XIV 


RACHEL’S SONG 

The girl looked seaward over the tumbling sand-hills, 
darkening now. 

“I say, look at the sun!” she cried. “We must be 
making home.” 

The light that had been in the other’s face went out. 
“Home,” he grunted. 

She sped swiftly at his side. 

Thyme and tiny pansies, their baby faces yellow- 
bibbed, strewed the sand. The girl put her finger be- 
neath the chin of one baby face and tilted it as she passed. 

“D’you know me?” she laughed; and it seemed to 
laugh back. 

“Little One, 

Do you remember, 

Do you remember. 

Little One, 

Do you remember. 

Me?” 

she crooned. 

They struck the road again where he had left it. 

The cows were still there, shaggy, moon-eyed, and 

serene. 

“These are my kitten-cows,” she smiled. “In the 
103 


104 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


great heat they leave the hills and go and lie down 
by the waves — to get the coolness and get away from 
the flies. Aren’t they lovely? — and don’t they har- 
monize?” 

They passed through the gate and out of the warren. 
Before them lay the fields and whitewashed farm, backed 
by the hills splendid in the evening. 

They walked on silent now, she rippling beside his 
solemn strides. 

Once the girl glanced swiftly up at the great gray figure, 
gloomy at her side. 

“Sad?” she asked. 

He did not answer, seeming not to have heard. 

Then he cleared his throat; and out of the silence 
came his voice, deep and tolling as a bell: 

“Mother’s dead.” 

The girl halted and looked up with stabbed eyes into 
the dark and shaggy face above her. 

“When did she die?” 

She caught her breath. 

“Thursday,” came the voice out of the deeps. 

She drew the swift breath of one wounded to the heart 
and stumbled on her way. 

“Cheer,” he said calmly. 

She touched his arm, a queer little noise in her throat. 

“Thank you,” she sniffed. 

The banks were high about them now, here and there 
a foxglove lifting a tall spire. 

She paused, her finger on his arm. 

“Can you hear the foxglove bells pealing?” she asked 
him low. 


RACHEL’S SONG 


105 


He nodded. 

“Sometimes.” 

“Do you know what they say?” 

She plucked a harebell and with it smote the blossoms 
of a foxglove as one playing chimes : 

“Sing-song, 

Ding-dong, 

Hill’s steep. 

Way’s long. 

“ Sing-song, 

Ding-dong, 

Home’s nigh. 

Heaven’s strong.” 

And it was his turn to say, “Thank you.” 

They crossed the railway bridge and passed the 
church. 

“Where are you staying?” asked the girl. 

He nodded at the bleak and lonely cottage by the 
road side. 

“That’s my bedroom with the blaze of sun on it.” 

“That attic?” trembled the girl. She lifted a pale 
face. “Have you no one with you? — no sister or any- 
body?” 

He shook his head. 

“My sister died seven years ago,” he said. “I came 
home from South Africa then and have been with mother 
ever since.” 

“But ought you to be alone just now?” with eager 
insistence. 

“It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve got my work.” 


106 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

Her eyes and throat were brimming as they passed 
the gate. 

“Don’t you turn in here?” she mumbled. 

“I’m coming with you to your gates.” 

They dropped down the hill and passed through the 
village. Here and there a boy touched his hat or a girl 
curtseyed. 

Rachel was walking swiftly, holding back a flood of 
tears. 

They came to the great iron gates. 

“Good-bye,” she gasped, and rushed in with panting 
bosom. 

He peered through the bars after her. 

She turned and waved, and then came back to him, 
her face streaming tears. 

They stared at each other through the bars : she within, 
he without, a few inches of space slashed with iron 
separating them. 

“It’s silly to be like this,” she gasped. “But I — 
I’m like that . . . .” She dabbed her eyes. “Will 

you — will you come up and see us, please?” There 
was a pleading note in her troubled voice, infinitely 
touching. 

He gripped the bars between them in both his hands, 
as Samson gripped the pillars of the house he was about 
to overthrow, and shook his head. 

“I hate aristocrats,” he grinned. 

The laughter bubbled up through her tears. 

“Are you a Socialist?” she cried. “What fun! — 
You must come up and have a row with Cousin Florence. 
She’s splendid. Will you? ” 


RACHEL’S SONG 


107 


He shook his shaggy head at her, rainy through sun- 
shine, across the bars. 

“Oh, yes, you will,” she teased, and thrust a white 
arm through the bars. “Good-bye, Blunt,” and dazzled 
him through her tears. 

He took her little hand in his great one. 

“Good-bye, my dear,” he said with beautiful tender- 
ness; and there was a rainbow gleam upon his face. 



BOOK III 


WAR OF WILLS 






















9 




XV 


THE LADIES AT THE HALL 

The Hall slept on its hill under stars. 

Beneath it in the valley swam the lights of the village, 
and circling it around in protecting array the lamps of 
cottage, lodge, or farm. 

Across the valley, on the crest of a hill, a furnace that 
had blazed day and night for thirty years flung its sparks 
into the darkness. 

The house squatted gigantic and ominous amid dim 
stretches of lawn and blocks of trees that rose island-like 
about it. Stark it stood, monstrous, and still, here 
and there a window blazing out of the blackness, or tiny 
light flickering in the heart of it, as a maid passed 
about her work. 

There was about the great house something hollow, 
hollow as of the tomb. It seemed to be a vast bubble 
floating on the surface of Earth, just about to burst; 
and somehow aware of it, and troubled at the prospect 
of its fate. 

A blackbird squeaked and scolded on its borders, and 
then hushed as though afraid of the coming catastrophe. 

At the back of the house near the stables, women con- 
gregated in bare, whitewashed rooms. They were most 
of them in black with white caps and aprons. Some were 
ill 


in 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


writing letters, some sewing, one young girl swilled plates 
by the light of a candle over a sink in a room like a cell; 
and three men in shirt sleeves were busy with silver in 
a larger room hard by. 

In front of the house one great window opened on a 
splendid terrace, a dim light pouring through it like a 
mist. Through the open window the warm night air 
drifted in, stirring the lace curtains that shrouded it; 
and flowed over shining spaces among settees and thin- 
legged chairs and writing tables, dim in shadow. 

In the heart of the vast room, ordered, dim, and rich 
with the gatherings of centuries, two women sat in a 
halo of chastened light, and worked. 

The one was just running to seed, the other just 
ripening. ^ 

The light from the shaded lamp fell on the girl’s dark 
hair, rich colouring, and the gray shawl that hung like 
gossamer about her bare neck and shoulders. 

Her eyes were brown: her mouth a Cupid’s bow. 
There was a warmth about her tints that suggested orange 
trees and olive orchards. Hers was not the apple- 
blossom beauty of English gardens. There was a touch 
of the Sun and the South, a hint of the Zingari, in her 
singing blood, the dreams in her eyes, and the rich brown 
comeliness that was by no means swarthy. 

She lay back in the deeps of a great chair, her cheek 
cosey upon a cushion, and two dark curls rebellious on 
her forehead. One shimmering foot, stripped of its shoe, 
rested upon the other shod in silver and peeping from 
beneath the cloud of her skirt. Her sleeves fell away 
like foam from her arms as she worked; and her hands 


THE LADIES AT THE HALL 113 

moved deftly, a ring on one of them flashing in the 
light. 

She was tempting, innocently voluptuous. 

The elder woman sat upright on a thin hard chair, 
a gray-muzzled Scotch terrier curled on a mat at her feet. 
She was all in black, a white frill about her throat, and 
a plain silver cross hanging on her bosom. 

This maiden lady who was nearly fifty liked to dress 
as if she was sixty and something of a widow; and the 
touch of austerity was not unbecoming to her beauty of 
the autumn, falling leaves, and frost. 

Every time her eyes lifted they rested tranquilly on the 
girl in the easy chair opposite and the touch of discord 
and discontent on her face passed away. The girl 
seemed to fill some deep need of her heart. 

“You look tired, my lady,” she said. 

The girl’s eyes met hers. 

“I’ve got a tiny touch of neuralgia, Cousin Florence. 
It’s nothing. ” 

The autumn lady dropped her chin and eyed the other 
sternly over her spectacles. 

“Is that the bathing?” 

A tinge of colour flecked the girl’s cheek. She lifted 
her eyebrows and made a round O of her mouth. 

“Oh, Cousin Florence! Who told you?” 

“Ha! ha!” said the other grimly. “Ha! ha! my lady.” 

“Now if that’s Kitson,” smiled the girl, “I will!” 

A man in black and white, who looked like a saint with 
amused eyes, opened a far door and came out of the dim- 
ness toward them, swift and smooth and stealthy, bearing 
skilfully a tray beautiful with porcelain and silverware. 


114 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


He bowed before the women, saying in hushed voice, 

“Coffee, my lady.” 

“Gregory,” said the elder woman, pouring, “I want 
you to find out who a man in a gray beard who goes about 
without a hat is.” She lifted her face to his. “I want 
to know who he is, where he’s stopping, and what he’s 
about. I don’t like the look of the man.” She gave 
her orders precisely and with emphasis. 

The puckers gathered about the saint’s amused eyes. 

“Very good, my lady,” and he disappeared with 
his tray, smooth and swift and stealthy as he had 
come. 

Rachel was sitting up now. 

“Who is it you want to know about. Cousin Florence? ” 
she asked, lifting dark eyes. 

The other clinked down her cup. 

“That tramp person in knickerbockers and a knapsack 
who bawled at me in the road this morning as I was never 
bawled at before in me life. ” 

The girl smiled at her. 

“Was all the fault on his side, Cousin Florence?” 

The other wetted her throat elaborately. 

“Cornin’ to church in that get-up,” she snorted. “In 
my young days the man’d have been run in. Even old 
Lloyd noticed it. Enough to spread infidelity!” She 
was dabbing at the eye of her needle. “ Such an example 
to the common people, too. No wonder the young men 
don’t come to church. A man like that. I bet,” she 
tapped viciously with her foot, and the dog squealed, 
“Oh, poor Mac! — I bet the man’s a rank radical. ” 

The girl bowed over her work. 


THE LADIES AT THE HALL 115 

“I don’t like you to bet, Cousin Florence,” she said 
demurely. 

The autumn lady’s face broke into a charming smile. 

“I will try to please you, Rachel,” she answered 
meekly. 

There are two or more of most of us. And there 
were at least two Lady Florences: there was the harsh 
and masterful spinster who had managed a great 
estate for a quarter of a century, and managed it 
excellently well; who couldn’t abide nonsense and always 
spoke her mind; who honestly believed she was an 
aristocrat set by God above the people to lord it over 
them for their good : and there was the plain woman, com- 
pact of the same earth and heaven as the village ma- 
trons, with the same instincts and the same aspirations, 
who had somehow missed motherhood, and who carried 
her unborn children in the deeps of her sighing heart. 

When dealing with the few she loved — Rachel, her 
dog, one or two old servants some of the dependent poor, 
and the young of her own, or indeed of any class — there 
was a massive charm about Lady Florence that would 
have surprised those who knew her only as the master- 
ful woman who sat on Boarded-out Committees, was a 
Guardian, and a talkative one, and a militant Prim- 
rose Dame; the charm of a lioness playing among her 
cubs with tender pats of huge paws. 

The girl looked up with laughing eyes. 

“He’s a nice old thing,” she said. “I want you to 
ask him up here, Cousin Florence. ” 

The other’s eyes flashed. 

“What! For the pleasure of being insulted by him 


116 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


again !” she ha-ha’d. “But I’d forgotten he was a friend 
of yours, Rachel ! ” 

“He’s beginning to be, I hope. . . . We passed 

the afternoon together. ” 

She said the words innocently, and looked up to see 
the other staring at her in the si ence. The challenge, 
doubt, and answer of the woman souls was swift, mute, 
and half unconscious. 

Then the girl hung her head. 

“We met on Majoopa — after I’d bathed. ” 

“Dear Rachel,” said the elder woman gently, “doesn’t 
that show you shouldn’t do these thngs?” 

The lovely colour tided across the girl’s face. 

“Perhaps I won’t again, Cousin Florence,” she said. 

The autumn lady swept the pass ng c oud away She 
was brisk again, bracing, combative. 

“Well, what about this man I m to take up — or ask 
up? I can’t have strange men up out of the village un- 
less I know something about them. What’s his name? 
Where does he come from? Is he anybody who is 
anybody? Has he got a father or a mother? It would 
be too much of course to expect him to have a grandfather. 
Is he Mr. Jones from Wales or Mr. Smith from Upper 
Tooting? I want to know a little bit about him. The 
man may be a Socialist for all I know. ” 

“I suppose God made him,” said the girl. 

“Only God knows that my dear,” replied the other, 
reverently. 

Rachel dropped her eyes. 

“He may not be one of us, Cousin Florence,” she said, 
and hung a mischievous second over the phrase, “but I 


THE LADIES AT THE HALL 117 

don’t see that matters very much in these days. It’s 
the man — if he’s nice. ” 

“But is he nice?” squealed the other. “He insulted 
me before all my people this morning as I was never 
insulted in me life before. ” 

“Oh, that was nothing, ” said the girl, demurely. 

The other’s eyes flashed. She sat very erect. 

“It’s nothing to you, I know, my dear Rachel,” she 
shivered — “my bein’ insulted as I’m cornin’ out of 
church; but it’s something to me. It’s so bad for the 
morale of the place. . . . You don’t understand; 

and you haven’t the responsibility. Heaven knows I’ve 
trouble enough to keep their manners nice and respectful 
and what one likes without great ill-bred nobodies from 
nowhere setting them against one, ” continued the 
indignant lady. “Such insolence /” 

She had become rough, coarse, and curiously aged. 

All the lioness charm had fled from her. The autumn 
lady, with her noble natural beauty, had turned into a 
barren old hind butting her head against a wall. 

The girl worked gently on. 

The other watching her smoothed down, and said at 
last, surly as a curmudgeon dog, 

“Unless you can find out something about him.” 

Rachel looked up sweetly. 

“I have found out something about him. Cousin 
Florence. ” 

“What?” 

The word came with the snap of a bullet. 

“He’s unhappy.” 

“What’s the matter with him?” Lady Florence’s voice 


118 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

deepened into raillery. “Crossed in love — at sixty — 
eh?” 

“He’s lost his mother,” said the girl, sucking in her 
lips. 

“And quite time too,” cried the other, determined not 
to be sentimental. “I never heard of such a thing — at 
his age. The man must be seventy if he’s a day. She 
must have been in her hundreds. Why, I lost mine when 
I was two — two I — And why’s he not wearing mourning, 
may I ask? — for his own mother? — his own mother? ” 

She set down her foot and fixed the girl with eyes hard 
and gray as December. 

“Where’s his crape? 

She flung a beautiful hand at the other. 

It was clear that Lady Florence thought the question 
was a poser, and settled for ever in her favour the differ- 
ence between them as to the offender’s character. 

Rachel brushed it aside. 

“D’ you think he’s seventy, Cousin Florence?” she 
asked. 

“I’m sure I can’t say to the day,” snapped the other. 
“I’m not the man’s godmother. But there or therea- 
bouts. ” 

“Then oughtn’t we to be kind to him?” insinuated the 
girl. “An old man like that.” 

The elder woman put down her work. 

“My dear Rachel, are you in love with the man?” 

The girl was as calm and sweet as the other was ruffled. 

“Not in the least, Cousin Florence. Only I’m sorry 
for the poor old boy. ” 

“If it comes to that he’s not so old as all that.” 


THE LADIES AT THE HALL 119 

The girl prodded in her pin delicately and with a daz- 
zling smile. 

“I thought you said just now he was seventy, Cousin 
Florence ?” 

Lady Florence looked hardly at her over her spec- 
tacles. 

“My dear Rachel, I don’t like you to take me up so 
sharply. ” 

The girl rose, came across her cousin and pinched her 
arm. 

“Now, I’ll sing to you,” she said. 

It was the elder woman who took up the conversation 
again, as they trailed up the great stairs to bed. 

“What is the man’s name?” she asked surlily. “I 
suppose he’s got one. I suppose they have names in the 
middle class?” 

To the dependent poor, Lady Florence was kind — 
they were too far off for her to fear them: to her own 
class she was courteous upon occasion — they were her 
equals, and their interests were hers. The middle class 
she affirmed she didn’t understand and couldn’t abide. 
“They ape us, ’’she would say, “and I hate apes.” In 
fact she felt that they were treading on her heels, and 
therefore feared them jealously, though she would have 
been furious had she been told so. She was not philoso- 
pher enough to know that her fear was rooted in a deep 
instinctive sense, old as the ages, and common to every 
organism, that the nearest are the most dangerous in the 
struggle for existence, and must exterminate or be ex- 
terminated. 


120 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“He is not one of us,” said Rachel demurely. “But 
he has a name. It’s Blunt. ” 

“ Blunt, ” repeated the other with inward eyes. “ Blunt, 
Blunt. I seem to know the name! — Isn’t there a paid 
agitator of that name? I must ask Gregory.” 

She trailed up the stairs, one hand hitching her dress, 
and one holding her candle, revolving in her mind the 
man and his name. 

To Lady Florence the agitator was a class below the 
criminal. In her eyes he was the Judas Iscariot of So- 
ciety : his loathsome function to betray — for money. 
And when once, after a General Election in which she 
had taken a furious part, she had received by post from 
an anonymous source a book entitled Jesus: the Agi- 
tator, she had burnt it, unread. 

“Where does he lodge, my dear?” 

“Who?” 

“Thing-um-a-bob. This motherless old man of yours. ” 

“ Mr. Blunt ! — At the top of the hill, in that tiny pink 
cottage nearly opposite the post-office on the way to the 
station. ” 

Lady Florence paused on the last stair, her hand on 
the girl’s arm. 

“Oh, that’s the man!” she cried. 

“What, Cousin Florence?” 

“Only he’s been getting into trouble. Hannah Fell 

sent up to old Lloyd this morning to say he’d been steal- 

• >> 

mg. 

“What rubbish!” 

“ Well, we shall see when he’s up before the magis- 
trates,” replied the other comfortably. 


THE LADIES AT THE HALL 


m 


The girl kissed her cousin, laughing. 

The autumn lady smiled grimly, and passed down the 

passage. 

The two women stood in the doors of their respective 
bedrooms, and peeped at each other, child-like. 

“Cousin Florence,” chuckled the girl. 

“Ha! ha! my lady!” answered the other. 

The girl passed into her bedroom. 

“Don’t shut that window for a moment, Kitty,” she 
said; and went out on to the balcony. 

On the hilltop opposite, across the valley, where the 
lights of the village swam, stood a cottage, bleak, dark, 
and lonely, under dull clouds. 

The girl kissed her hand to it. 

“ Good night, old man Blunt, ” she murmured. “Sleep 
well.” 


XVI 


JOHN BLUNT TURNS HIS BACK 

That evening when John Blunt returned to his cottage, 
Hannah Fell was waiting him on the door step in the 
dusk; and there was challenge in her dark face. 

He met her with his eyes, which were soft and deep 
and shining as the twilight. 

“Good evening,” he said. 

The challenge faded from the woman’s face; and she 
rolled back into the kitchen. 

At supper she brought him brown bread as well as 
white. 

“Makes a change,” she said surlily. 

Up in his attic John Blunt lay for long that night with 
wide eyes, the moon shining on his bare body. 

Once he turned on his side and stared as though into 
eyes close to his own. 

At last he rose and padded to the window. 

In the road beneath, two Sabbath lovers were parting 
in the shadow of the hedge. He heard the cluck of kisses 
in the darkness, then a man’s voice, beautifully soft, 
“Good neet, Lassie!” and the sound of parting feet. 

The moon shone in a deserted heaven ; one star 
twinkled above a black tree; and from afar came the 
rumble and panting of a train. 

122 


JOHN BLUNT TURNS HIS BACK 


123 


Standing white-limbed in the moonshine, his breath 
misty about him, he looked out toward the sand-hill on 
which he had stood that evening with the girl. 

He could not see it in the darkness, but he threw up 
his head like a wild beast and sniffed. 

Some secret impulse prompting him, he went to a 
drawer, pulled out an old shirt, and donned it. 

Then he lit a match and looked at himself in the glass. 

The ends of the shirt flapped comically about his legs 
and he chuckled to himself as he stared. 

Then he returned to bed, to lie there for long with wide 
eyes. 

Hannah Fell was on her hands and knees cleaning the 
step when John Blunt came back from the river next 
morning. 

She could see his head bobbing above the hedge as he 
came, the towel about his neck, and his hair wet and wild. 

She looked up at him with doubtful eyes as he kicked 
the gate open. 

He entered silent and grim. It seemed that he had 
done himself a violence in the night. All the sweetness 
and peace had left his face. It was dark and set, as 
though by force of Will he had dammed the tide of light 
and love that had been pouring in on it. 

The Spirit of Resistance possessed him. It domineered 
over his soul to the exclusion of all else. He was a wall 
of iron encircling darkness and death; for he seemed to 
have trampled under foot all that was lovely and beauti- 
ful and living within him. 

He strode across the kneeling woman, brushing with 


124 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

his leg the cat which lay curled between her broad 
shoulders. 

“ My washing’s ready, ” he said. “ Make out the list. ” 

“Mak oot yer own,” grunted the woman. 

John Blunt turned in the dark passage, and growled 
with sudden savagery. 

The woman on her hands and knees in the door snarled 
back at him. 

He snatched the cat from between her broad shoulders 
and rocked it in his arms, his chin deep in its fur, and the 
cruel laughing light in his eyes. 

It was not the School-boy who was dominant this morn- 
ing, nor the Man: it was the Brutal Youth who in mo- 
ments of levity or strain is liable to come uppermost in 
us all. 

“Pip!” he purred. “Pip! my Pip-O!” and the 
cat purred back. 

The woman scrambled to her feet, upsetting her pail. 

Then she stood in the door, broad as a barrel. 

“Thou thief!” she whimpered. 

Rumbling savage laughter, the other tumbled up the 
attic stair, the cat purring on his shoulder. 

The little arched window was wide. He went to it 
and looked out. 

Over fields and shining flats he saw the sea like a white 
bar laid across the chinks of the sand-hills ; and Majuba 
flat-topped and fortress-like at the end of them. 

Deliberately he closed the window, and turned his 
back upon it. 


XVII 


THE ROGUE-MAN 

The School-boy, who at the touch of a girl had been 
emerging slowly from the deeps of that dark cavern in 
which he had lain dormant for some time, retreated again 
into the deeps of John Blunt’s heart and was no more 
seen. 

The old Rogue-man, lonely and combative, reigned in 
his stead. 

Now he set about his work with a sort of sullen deter- 
mination. 

He lived as regular as the sun. Every morning found 
him in the river at six-thirty. Eight saw him sitting down 
to breakfast, Pip haunting his feet. At half-past he 
carved a square of soft bread from the loaf, dropped down 
into the village, and turned into the dim, barn-like stable 
by the shop where in the farthest stall an old white 
horse, ghostly in the dusk, turned a tombstone head and 
patient eyes to greet him. A quarter of an hour later he 
was leaning over the bridge, gazing down at the river 
beneath. And at nine-fifteen he was back at the cot- 
tage, donning his knapsack. 

All day he tramped with heavy-laden heart among the 
great hills that loomed and gloomed about him, taking, 
it seemed, their moods from his. 


125 


126 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


The carters and shepherds of the district soon grew 
accustomed to the shaggy, savage figure, who walked 
the roads bare-headed, sucking at a battered pipe. They 
met him in the sanded parlours of little whitewashed inns 
amid the hills; they saw him at hound trails, wrestling 
matches, agricultural shows — the man with the eyes who 
asked questions and made notes. 

He passed nights on hill sheep farms. He slept in 
mining villages where the streams, half a century ago 
as pure as children’s eyes, now run red as rust, and heard 
tales of the great days of the seventies when the captains 
of pits earned a pound a day and the miners’ wives 
scrubbed their floors in silks. One night he passed at 
Barrow amid the furnaces, Ben Brocklebank for his 
guide; and one in the heather on the dellside with little 
Jeremy Roam, the Baptist, who spent his life preaching 
Christ among the hills, had never more than sixpence 
in the world, and never wanted. 

“The Lord Jesus be with thee in thy work whatever 
it may be, ” said the little man as they parted in the dawn 
on the High Fells between the Duddon and Holmdale. 
“We shall meet again surely. All roads run to heaven.” 

When he came home of mornings, wild and shaggy as 
a winter colt, the hay-seeds in his beard, Hannah Fell 
would meet him with lewd chuckles, and mutter strange 
things into her cat’s fur, giggling and gurgling and flash- 
ing dark eyes at the other. 

He understood her; and indeed she made her meaning 
plain enough. Once as he entered she met him in the 
door, put her hand deliberately upon his shoulder, and 
lifting bold, laughter-lurking eyes to his whispered. 


THE ROGUE-MAN 


m 


“Art a gay lad for an owd’ un.” 

“Get out, you old randy!” he shouted, and put his 
arm about her to sweep her aside. 

She stiffened against it. 

“Nay, A’m none for thee,” she said, lifting a set face. 
“A’m claimed.” 

He glowered down at her. Squat and dark though 
she was, there was a sort of beauty about her smooth 
brown face. 

“You’ve been a red hot ’un in your day, my darling, 
I’ll lay, ” he growled. 

There was a proud and lifted look on the dark face as 
she answered him. 

“Never but the one,” she said. “Him and him only. 
Mated we was though never married.” A sly and cruel 
light stole into her eyes. “He wasna’ like to thee,” 
she said, in her voice and look something of the cruel 
caress of the drawing-room lady who stabs her lover to 
the heart for sheer pleasure in causing pahj. *“He was 
a gentleman, was ma Jo. ” 

Hannah Fell’s foul suspicions were entirely false. For 
all his violence there was no cleaner living man in the 
Three Kingdoms than John Blunt. 

True the village women looked with very gentle 
eyes on the shaggy great barbarian who prowled 
about and chatted with them as they stood in their 
cottage doors. The girls courtseyed to him, and 
a cloud of children would gather about his feet of 
evenings as he stood by the low wall gazing at the 


river. 


128 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


Even Lady Florence, meeting him as he marched 
down the street at sunset, little lame Willie 
Jameson set in glory on his shoulder, eyed him 
approvingly: for she loved a fine man as she loved a 
fine horse, handling both with the same almost brutal 
resolution. 

He had bone , excellent bone; and this fine judge of 
stock, who before now had taken her place in the ring at 
agricultural shows and played her, part there admirably 
as any man of them all, knew well that bone was the basis 
of muscular manhood. 

Lady Florence’s admiration was for the moment only, 
for Gregory reported to her ladyship that this Mr. Blunt 
was making “a sort of ’ouse to ’ouse inspection almost 
like in the village. ” 

“I don’t like it my lady, reelly I don’t — spying and 
photygraphing and asking all manner o’ questions he’s 
no business to.” 

Lady Florence set her teeth and wondered what the 
man was up to. 

Gregory opined that he was up to his larks. 

“I wonder the women stand it,” said her lady- 
ship. 

The saint with the amused eyes sniggered and dropped 
his voice. 

“Well, ye see, he’s such a big man, my lady, and so 
’airy with it.” 

Lady Florence tapped the table. 

“That’ll do, Gregory,” she said sharply, and rose and 
walked to the window. 


THE ROGUE-MAN 


129 


John Blunt tramped north, south, and east. 

Westward, the way of the sea and the sand-hills, he 
never went. 

On leaving the cottage he turned his back on them, as 
though of set purpose, and struck inland through the 
village. 

The road to Blackwater and the savage country 
about the Scaur, which he most often took, skirted 
the grounds of the Hall. These he would pass, 
tramping deliberate and determined, his eyes on his 
feet. 

Once from out of the green dusk of beeches he heard 
a rich young voice calling, 

“Mac! Mac!” and the crackling of a dog’s feet 
amid dead leaves. 

The voice shot across the gloomy waters of his mind 
like a gleam of sun. Then a shadow rose up and blotted 
out the gleam. 

He set his face and trudged on like a veteran under 
fire, his eyes steady on the brown road before him; nor 
did he raise them till he had reached the bracken country, 
and the hills began to lift around him. 

Once across the Wart at Stoneford Bridge, Warton 
Fell purple peaked upon his right, and the broad-backed 
Scaur green and glimmering beyond, he began to whistle. 

Here he could feel South African. 

When he came back that evening he paused, on en- 
tering his sitting room, and sniffed. 

“Anybody called?” he asked. 

The woman was banging with a broom in the kitchen, 

“Nay,” she answered, thick as a fog. 


130 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


And he never saw written in the dust upon the mantel- 
piece the words: 


You haven’t been. 

Next day as he was walking down the village street he 
saw the two ladies coming down the hill from the Hall 
toward him. 

He turned abruptly off the road and stood behind an 
ash on the bank of the river. His eyelids fluttered; and 
his whole face was moved. 

The ladies passed close behind him in the road. 

“You’re getting quite intriguee about him. Cousin 
Florence,” came the girl’s laughing voice, the voice that 
sent the waves surging through his face. 

“I want to see him eye to eye,” came the firm reply. 
“I want to know what it’s all about.” 

The following morning, as John Blunt sat in the tumble- 
down basket chair and wrote, the woman brought him 
in a note. 

“The groom’s waiting,” she said. 

The note was from the Hall and ran * 

Dear Mr. Blunt, 

You are never in when I call and I don’t know if She gives 
my messages. 

My cousin wants to know if you will come and have tea with 
us this afternoon. 

Yours sincerely, 
Rachel Carmelite. 

John Blunt looked up at the woman standing in the door. 


THE ROGUE-MAN 


131 


“What a liar you are!” he cried genially. “What’s 
it like to be a liar?” 

The woman dropped her eyes, muttering obscenely. 
John Blunt chuckled, turned down the edge of the note, 
and wrote on the flap : 


Sorry. Can’t. 

Ours. 

and tossed it to the other. 

That evening Lady Florence strolled down into the 
village. 

She was in black as always, simple almost to shabbi- 
ness, and knitting as she strolled. 

Behind her a surly little dog with prick ears and gray 
muzzle paddled sombrely. 

It was clear the little dog liked the road to himself. 
He rolled down the very centre of it, broad-chested and 
bow-legged. Did any other dog show a nose he stood 
stark with bristling neck and thundered in his throat. 

Mac never forgot that he was the dog of the Lady of 
the Hall, and he never allowed others to forget it either. 

Every now and then his mistress waited for him: for 
Mac waddled at a mile an hour or less. Therefore when 
the autumn lady went for a walk with him, she took her 
knitting with her to occupy her hands and relieve the 
tedium of too leisurely feet. 

At the foot of the hill she saw a man busy at the pump. 

She halted and watched him, hostility gathering in 
eyes and lips. The man tinkered at the pump, examined 
it with careful scrutiny, took a sample of water in a bottle, 


132 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


and put the bottle in his pocket. Then he stood bare- 
headed in the road and made notes in a pocket-book. 

Lady Florence walked across to him, deliberate and 
determined, her needles flashing challenge. 

“May I ask what you are doing tampering with the 
pump?” she inquired with a frosty smile. 

The other did not raise his eyes, and continued his 
writing. 

“No,” he said with exaggerated firmness. 

Lady Florence was not used to being met by a blank 
wall. For a moment she was disconcerted. * Then her 
eyes began to flash. 

“I don’t understand,” she said harshly. “I asked you 
a question you haven’t answered.” 

“Have,” replied the other, firm as a mountain. 

He wrote on, ignoring her; and Lady Florence was not 
used to being ignored. 

She stared at him, her bosom heaving. 

“The man’s cracked!” she cried to heaven — 
“crrracked!” and rolled her r’s like musketry. 

The grim humour gathered in wrinkles about the Rogue- 
man’s eyes. His lids were lowered to hide the laughter 
lurking underneath them. Every now and then he raised 
his face, and looked at the pump, sucking his pencil. 

The lady tried again. 

“Are you an artist?” she asked. 

“No,” replied the monosyllabic man. 

Lady Florence laughed harshly. 

“Nor a gentleman,” she cried and whisked away, 
happy in the last word, and hopeful that the victory lay 
with her. 


XVIII 


JOHN BLUNT CONQUERS 

The School-boy, who has his abiding home deep in 
the heart of every true man, made this sudden and sur- 
prising sally from the gloomy fastnesses where he had 
been so long immured only to retreat again precipitately. 

And the cloud that had descended on the heart of John 
Blunt seemed to have descended on the earth too. There 
was rain, rain, always rain. It pattered on the roof 
above him by night, and pelted down on his broad back 
by day. The hills smoked, shrouded to the foot in 
storm; and the valleys were loud with rushing water. 
White-tailed torrents thrashed down the ghylls; the fell- 
sides were dark as with sweat; and the bowlders shone. 
In the lowlands the corn rotted in the shock; and the 
Wart was loud and tawny, the salmon forging up it from 
the sea. 

John Blunt trudged about his work in boots that 
squelched and clothes that clung about him; the rain 
dripping from his beard and running down his neck. He 
was sodden and gloomy as the weather; and there was 
a grimness about his lips and an occasional gleam in his 
eyes as he breasted a hill or splashed down a fell-side, 
the bracken clinging about his knees, to show that for 
him the battle was not without its joys. 

133 


134 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


And there was battle for him at home as well as abroad. 

He had to fight Hannah Fell in addition to the elements. 
That dark woman had settled down to a breathing dour 
hostility ever since the day when, going out herself, 
she had locked Pip in the cupboard and had come 
back to find the cupboard door bashed in and John Blunt 
nursing the great cat, and humming, 

“ Oh, Hannah Fell, oh, Hannah Fell, 

The reason why I cannot tell, 

I do not like you, Hannah Fell.” 

There were rows about wet clothes; rows about wet 
boots; rows about open windows. 

John Blunt mocked at the woman, mouthed at her, 
stroked her cat, slapped her back, and drove on his 
Juggernaut way, ruthless and relentless. 

She said little, smouldering, muttering, and breathing 
like a beast, as she rolled about the house. 

So the two rough spirits, grim, elemental, earthy of 
the earth, warred against each other, clashing by reason 
of a divergence that had its root in a certain similarity 
of temperament. 

One afternoon after a morning of slashing rain John 
Blunt laid his work aside and set out to climb the Scaur. 

There was a break in the weather, a gleam of better 
things in the sky as he started that seemed to find some 
reflection in his face. 

On the road under Warton Fell, where a stone marks 
the death spot of a local Wesleyan Dreacher, he paused 
and looked about him. 


JOHN BLUNT CONQUERS 135 

The smother of clouds was rolling off the hills, and the 
sun shone dimly through smoke. 

Turning off the road he walked up through a wood of 
firs, the bracken breast high on either side of him, and here 
and there a rabbit scuttling across the path. Through 
a gate he passed out on to the broad-backed fell. Up 
there he had no companions but a few sheep, gray as 
the bowlders. Bracken and fir were soon left behind and 
the hillside lay naked before him, a wall running up it 
like a stiff gray mane. He plunged through morasses, 
the water cold and squelching in his boots, and across 
swarthy amber streams. 

On the highlands a great wind blew, clearing the sky 
of cloud and the hills of shadow. John Blunt’s face 
cleared too. Once the tail of a black cloud lashed him 
spitefully as it passed. Then all was fair and shining. 

Beyond a great red gash in the earth the wall ceased; 
and he climbed the bleak summit among gray bowlders 
and gray sheep. On his left across Blackdale, the hills 
clustered dark and terrible in the sunshine, sharp-spined 
Ewebarrow glimmering white amongst them, and Hoar 
Fell lifting a great shoulder beyond. 

Breathing deep he climbed to the cairn and looked 
behind him. He saw the lowlands bright with water 
after the rain; and beyond them the sea baring a broad 
white bosom, the knob of Warton Fell black against it. 

Standing up there in the blue, the wind upon him, 
John Blunt looked across toward the line of sand-hills 
that ran low and jagged along the edge of the sea; and 
at the end of them by the shining estuary, Majuba, 
square-topped and grim, rising in tiny eminence. 


136 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


He gazed at it with gleaming eyes, then, flinging both 
hands into the blue, 

“I have conquered!” he thundered. 

And there in the windy hollow of the heavens his voice, 
that as it emerged from him resounded so masterfully, 
seemed little more than the chirp of a sparrow, to be 
tossed out on the surging Ocean of the Infinite whence 
it came, and lost there. 

That evening as he tramped home a great peace settled 
on land and sea and sky. The wind dropped, and the 
west opened like a window in a wall. The trouble of 
storm and rain that had for days disturbed the sky passed. 
A shining calm succeeded it. Eastward over the hills 
a huddle of purple clouds rolled away. One spear of 
shining bronze barred the clear west, and here and there 
a scroll of fire touched low-banked clouds on the horizon. 
A fleece of pearly pink, lovely dappled, was drawn over 
Lancaster Fell; and the moon lay on its face and looked 
down in silvery majesty on Dark Coombe. 

There was a reflected peace on the face of John Blunt 
as he tramped home through the village. 

Opposite the forge, as he marched along humming, 
he met Lady Florence, and touched his forehead with 
twinkling eyes. 

It was the first time the two had met since the affair 
of the pump. 

To her own amazement the lady acknowledged him with 
a smile, then passed swiftly on her way as one ashamed. 

“The man’s mad!” she cried to Rachel, reciting the 
incident that evening. “After insultin’ me the other 


JOHN BLUNT CONQUERS 137 

day as I was never insulted in me life before, now he grins 
a great big-dog grin at me and touches his forehead.” 

“ He is a great big dog,” said Rachel. “He’d love you 
if you’d let him. ” 

Something of the peace of the evening seemed even 
to have touched the wild, dark woman who met John 
Blunt as he stooped to enter the cottage. 

“ She cam, ” she said, and retired into the kitchen. 
John Blunt passed down the darkening passage, and 
into his dim sitting room, with open nostrils. 

At the threshold he paused with lifted face. 

Then he entered with bowed head. 

On the bare table was a basket of sweet peas, red and 
white and fragrant in the gloom. 

He plunged his face into the heart of them. 


XIX 


THE WAY OF RACHEL CARMELITE 

There was an unusual gentleness about the face of 
John Blunt next morning as he came down to break- 
fast. 

He was standing before his mother’s miniature, turning 
over his Churchman’s Almanack, when Hannah Fell 
rolled in with his breakfast. 

“What’s the date?” he asked. 

“Can’t say,” replied the woman, surly as a man. 

“Is it can’t or won’t?” said John Blunt, broadly 
grinning. 

“Maybe both or maybe neether,” muttered the other. 

John Blunt strode past her into the kitchen. 

“ Pip ho ! ” he called in deep rollicking voice. “ Pip ho !” 

The cat came rustling out of a cupboard and ran to 
him. John Blunt swept him up in his arms. 

The woman flashed the bread knife. 

“Let be!” she screamed. “Or ATI let light into 
thee.” 

“Thou’ll’t kill thy cat!” he roared, dancing before 
her. “Old cat, thou’ll’t kill thy kitten.” 

The School-boy had emerged once more. 

His breakfast done, he took a look at his mother’s 
miniature; then sat down and wrote: 

133 


THE WAY OF RACHEL CARMELITE 139 


Dear Little Mother: Many happy returns of your birth- 
day. Live for ever. 

Jacko. 

I have found the girl a place. Nonconformist Minister’s 
wife. A. I. 

Then he cut his usual slice of soft bread from the 
loaf, dropped down the hill into the village, and passed 
into the barn of a stable by the shop. A dim light 
penetrated it through cobwebbed windows, leaded and 
broken. 

The roof was low, the floor cobbled, and the stable 
smelt of ammonia and manure. In one stall was a litter 
of hay; in the next hung some ramshackle harness and 
a lantern. 

As John Blunt entered, the old horse, ghostly in the 
farthest stall, turned his tombstone head and mild blue 
eyes, and whinnied softly. 

“Hullo, old man,” murmured John Blunt confidentially; 
“I’m a-comin’,” and he edged his way up the narrow 
stall, and held out a hand, the bread on the flat of his 
palm. 

The old horse thrust forth pendulous pink lips, and 
picked up the bread, tossing his head up and down as he 
ate. 

Standing in the dusk he seemed very tall, white, and 
spectre-like. Dingy harness sat upon his arched back, 
and the breeching dropped slackly about his hocks. 

He stood in his own dung, his back to the cobwebbed 
window with the broken pane, and a rope halter bound 
him to the manger. 

The stable was very low and he stood with drooping 


140 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


head, as though conscious that to fling it would be to 
strike it against a beam. 

John Blunt took a fork and cleared the dung away 
from the old horse’s hind feet. 

“They might muck you out, poor old boy,” he said; 
then went to the window and broke away some of the 
splintered glass. 

The sweet air flowed in and stirred the old horse’s 
tail. 

He turned his loving blue eye on the man behind him. 

John Blunt patted his gaunt quarter. 

“Old Tom-horse,” he said in deep and musical voice, 
and went out, whistling. 

He walked along the river toward the bridge. 

For once some one was before him. A girl in a straw- 
berry cream dress was leaning over, watching the water. 

There had been rain again in the night. The river 
rushed down brown and brimming, seething against the 
pillars of the bridge, and foaming along beneath the alders. 

The girl’s hair was dark beneath a broad-flung straw 
hat, and as he came nearer he saw that she was chuckling 
to the chuckle of the water. 

He stood at the bridge end and watched her. 

There were pebbles in her hand. She dropped them one 
by one and craned over, hugging the parapet with her 
young body to see them fall. As they plopped into the 
water she laughed. 

John Blunt leaned over beside her without a word. 

Beneath them, red cows grazed in the meadows; and 
the dew sparkled orange and gold and amethyst on the 
river bank. 


THE WAY OF RACHEL CARMELITE 141 


“ I know who it is, ” she said, never raising her eyes. 
“You know what I like is the way it’s all smooth for a 
minute, and then it gurgles. There! — It’s like a child 
laughing when you tickle him!” She reached down 
her long white fingers toward the sliding water. “I 
tickle you. ... I teeckle you, you darling little old 
river.” 

She turned her clear brown eyes to him. Her face 
rested on her hand, her delicate young elbow poised on 
the lichened parapet, and a glimmer of white arm shone 
through the mist of her transparent sleeve. 

There was about her the warmth and sweetness that 
makes the best women at their best when newly risen. 

“Why haven’t you been to see us?” 

He didn’t answer, watching the water. 

Her eyes wandered affectionately over the shaggy 
sun-browned head, the gray hair still wet and rather wild. 

“You bathe in the river every morning, don’t you?” 

“I have a dip most days. I get a decent header into 
that sandy pool by the beech.” 

“I wish I could,” said the girl mock-gloomily. 

“You can’t, my dear.” 

“I know. It’s rot. Girls have a rotten time.” 

The teasing light came to her eyes. 

“ Cousin Florence says you’re trespassing, and that she 
won’t have it. She’s going to send a man after you.” 

“She’s welcome,” said John Blunt. “But she must 
send some one who can swim a bit. I’m an old man but 
I’ve got the legs of most of ’em in the water still. 

Together they strolled back toward the Hall. 

“I haven’t had breakfast yet; have you?” 


142 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

“Yes. I’ve had a bath, and breakfast and a row with 
Fell. 

The girl’s white brow clouded. 

“Why d’you stop with her? Cousin Florence says 
she’s not right. There was some trouble a long time ago, 
and she’s never got over it. ” 

“I like rows.” 

The girl shook her head. 

“They’re bad for you,” she said wisely. “I’m sure 
they’re bad for you. They make you unloving.” 

They were passing the Brackenhurst Arms. 

“Try for rooms in there,” she suggested. 

“I have,” he answered. “They’re full up. So’s 
every lodging in the village. August and September are 
bad months for the homeless man. ” 

“Then why d’you stop here?” 

“Must. Work.” 

She gleamed up at him. 

“ What is your work? ” she asked, inquisitive as a kitten. 

He grinned at her, the Boy in him answering the Girl 
in her. 

“ Making trouble. ” 

She rippled laughter. 

“I believe you’re the D in disguise. Cousin Florence 
is in an awful state about you. The butler reports your 
doings to her. You're being watched — ha! ha!” 

A gong sounded remotely from the house amid the 
beeches. 

“ There’s prayers, ” cried the girl. “ I must fly. Good- 
bye, dear Blunt. ” 

“Good-bye, my dear.” 


THE WAY OF RACHEL CARMELITE 143 


Ten minutes later old Mr. Lloyd, the parson, walking 
through the village, was amazed to see a huge-shouldered, 
six-foot figure dodging in the road before little Willie 
Jameson, a defective boy with the face of a cunning 
angel. 

The parson stayed to watch. 

The big man and the tiny lad stood face to face op- 
posite the forge. The big man’s body was bent, his arms 
swung low, and his face was set and serious. He danced 
to one side and then to the other; made a feint and then 
skipped back. The boy with the face of a cunning angel 
shambled to and fro, pursuing, dabbing, gurgling delight. 

“ Dodg’d you, Bill!” shouted the great man, skirted 
his opponent, and touched a tree behind. 

The little boy pursued him. 

“Catch’d!” he cried in tiny treble, and buried his 
face in the other’s legs. 

The giant lifted the child in his arms. 

“Home, Bill! home! ”he called. 

Mr. Lloyd, as human hearted a man as ever wore 
black, told Lady Florence next day that he thought the 
chap was all right — eccentric, you know; but seemed a 
decent sort. 


XX 


OLD TOM-HORSE 

Next day as John Blunt tramped home, a strawberry 
cream dress amid a group of children outside the forge 
caught his eyes. 

His slow, heavy tramp became a thought quicker. 

Rachel was standing amidst a bevy of village maidens, 
their faces lifted to hers as daisies lift their faces to 
the sun. 

“I’ve only got one bit for the smallest, ” she was saying, 
handing to the mite with the broad-blown, apple-blossom 
face a silver- wrapped stick of chocolate. “Here! You 
mustn’t eat the paper too. ” 

John Blunt tramped up. 

“Why, here's the chocolate man!” cried the girl. 
“Chocolate! Chocolate for the children, please!” 

He foraged in his knapsack and produced a hunk, 
growling. 

“D’you grudge it me?” She laughed. “What fun!” 

“It’s bad for ’em,” grumbled John Blunt. “Bad for 
their tummies and their morals. ” 

“Cock-a-doodle-doo!” mocked the girl. “I can’t 
break it. ” 

He broke it for her. 

“May I keep one stick?” he asked, meekly. 

144 


OLD TOM-HORSE 


145 


“What d’you want it for?” smiling. 

“If you’ll come along you’ll see.” 

“All right, I’ll come along. One minute.” 

She distributed her largesse, and pursued his broad and 
dogged back: for he had not waited. 

“ I say ! Will you come to tea to-morrow? ” 

He shook his head. 

“Oh, why not, grumpy?” 

“Wouldn’t do.” 

“But why wouldn’t it do?” 

“The missus and me wouldn’t hit it.” 

The girl dropped her eyes. 

“Cousin Florence is a dear. Quite conventional of 
course, but she’s all right inside — once you can get 
there. . . . Won’t you come?” 

She lifted her eyes again. 

He shook his head. 

“I thought you were lonely,” said the girl, rather 
piqued. 

“I’ve found a friend.” 

A provoked li ttle smile dazzled the girl’s eyes. 

“Have you? Who? Daisy Lloyd?” 

He threw up his head and laughed his deep chest 
laughter. 

“Come and see.” 

He turned into the stable where the old horse stood, 
a gaunt ghost in his dusky stall, and turned a long lean 
neck toward them. 

The man handed the girl the chocolate he had saved, 
and watched her sidle up the narrow stall and hold out a 
white palm. 


146 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


The old horse muzzled and mouthed it tenderly, while 
she murmured to him. 

“His name’s Tom,” said John Blunt. “He’s twenty, 
and as honest as the day, and they say he’s not old yet. 
They’ve had him fifteen years in this shop, and the dealer 
said he wouldn’t last a year when he came. They’re 
quite kind to him. He has his Sundays off and some- 
times a week-day. Once he tumbled down on the ice on 
Lancaster Fell, and was laid up for three months. Other- 
wise he’s never been sick or sorry. And every now and 
then he gets a day off and spends it in the meadow by 
the river. Poor old Tom-horse! Poor old Tom!” 

The Unspeakable Blunt, the terror of his times, and the 
ogre with whom West End ladies frightened their children, 
was no longer a man. He was a school-boy showing off 
his pet rabbit to a friend; his words came tumbling out 
higgledy-piggledy; and he panted and breathed deep. 

The girl looked up with laughing eyes, almost ex- 
pecting to see an Eton collar smudged with thumb marks, 
and a smooth, pink face above it. 

“He’s a beauty,” she murmured, patting the long, 
hollow neck. “How did you get to know him? ” 

“I met him in the street,” said the other. “I thought 
he looked lonely, so stopped and had a yarn. And now 
we meet most days.” 

She stood in the dusk tall and slim and moth-like be- 
side the old horse, her bare hand stroking his neck with 
firm and easy motions. 

The man watched it come and go fascinated. 

Then she laid her cheek against the old horse’s muzzle 
and loved him, purring deliciously. 


OLD TOM-HORSE 


147 


John Blunt began to tremble. 

Slowly now she came back toward him, her eyes 
shining and smiling in the dusk, her hand trailing along 
the old horse’s back. 

John Blunt seemed to topple toward her, and then 
restrain himself with a jerk. 

“Nice friend for little boy,” she murmured, teasing. 

He turned and shouldered away toward the door, 
through which the light poured. 

She lingered in the dusk, seeming to love it. 

“Look here, I wish you’d come to-morrow, old maij 
Blunt.” 

There was a note of appeal in her voice and eyes. 

“No,” he said, short and sharp as the report of 3 
pistol; and she felt she had run up against the rock 
his will. 

A knapsacked back passed through the door. 

As he went by the window a hand thrust through the 
broken panes, and delicate long fingers reached after 
him, cat-like. 

“ Monsieur Ours ,” called a laughing voice, alike pro- 
voking and provoked. 

The girl was very silent at dinner that evening. 

“Well, my dear, is he coming?” asked the autumn 
lady at last. 

“No, he won’t come.” 

The other nodded significantly. 

“Ah,” she said, “there’s something; I don’t know what.” 

“There is,” said the girl. “He thinks we’re snobby 
and vulgar. ” 


148 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“ My dear, does it matter what a man like that thinks? ” 
asked Lady Florence loftily. 

“And perhaps we are,” said Rachel, shortly. 

Lady Florence sipped her coffee, and looked at the girl 
over it. 

She had never known Rachel like that before. 


XXI 


A BUTTON COMES OFF 

That evening John Blunt passed with Janies Rigg, 
the old man who ended in himself. 

Intercourse between the pair was difficult, for the old 
fellow was almost stone deaf. 

But this was by no means John Blunt’s first call, for 
he often dropped in at the whitewashed farm of evenings. 
The other’s loneliness drew him. Now indeed the two 
were almost old friends, as those soon become who have 
none else to love or be loved by. And James Rigg looked 
forward to the visits of the other, and now that he was 
used to him chattered away freely. 

He remembered Barrow when it was a village, and he 
would tramp across the hills to take part in the wrestling 
matches there. As a lad he used to drive to Broughton 
to school, the coach taking the road across the sands at 
the estuary. Then the railway had come to Scar, bit 
by bit; and with it the new world to which the old man 
did not belong. 

It was with thoughtful eyes that John Blunt trudged 
home in the dark. 

The picture of that old man sitting among his horse- 
hair chairs and few dumb photographs, without a woman, 
without a child, rose before his eyes. 

149 


150 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


He was not as bad as that, thank God. 

He had still one woman on Earth and one in Heaven 
to love him. 

It was to the former that he sat down to write when he 
reached his lodgings. 

Dear Martha : 

It’s no good your coming up here as you suggest, to mind and 
mend me. There’s nowhere to put you. Also you and this 
woman would fight, and she wouldn’t have Abraham at any 
price because she has a Great Fighting Cat of her own. 

No, you must stop on with your sister and take care not to 
quarrel with her. 

You are by no means to take your money out of Local Loans 
and lend it to the young man who preaches to start an eating 
house with. You are to give the young man good advice 
but no money. I am very glad the young man should preach 
so beautifully, but you are to let somebody else earn the twenty 
per cent, that he promises. Three per cent, is quite enough 
for an honest woman. 

From what you say I think you ought to give Abraham one 
of the powders which I am sending you. Mix it with his milk 
in the morning, and don’t give him any supper the night before. 
Be strong about this. Don't let him get round you. 

I shall come back early in October, when I shall come down 
to stop with you. 

I miss your old chatter more than you might think. 

Yours affectionately. 

Master Jack. 

Rachel stood at her bedroom window that morning. 
The dew was still gray upon the grass, and the sun had 
topped the banks of trees across the lawns some time 


since. 


A BUTTON COMES OFF 


151 


The girl took a little book with a cross upon it from her 
dressing table, and sat down in an arm-chair. 

She turned the leaves of the book, but her eyes were 
not on it. Over the trees she could see the gray bridge 
and the river glinting beneath it. She looked at her 
watch. It was ten minutes to nine. Every morning at 
that hour for days past she had looked out to see a now 
familiar figure leaning over the bridge. 

To-day there was none. 

The girl closed her book unread, and went to the 
window. It was a misty morning, the sky dabbled here 
and there with gray. There was a hint of autumn 
and frost in the air. On the roof overhead the swallows 
crowded and twittered. Under the beeches the lawns 
were strewn with gold; and the stone bowls, brimming 
with lobelia, that guarded the steps leading down to the 
fountain, dripped with dew. 

At the back of the lawns the drive wound between 
beech stems, the meadows falling away down to the river 
beyond. 

Some one was coming up the drive at a slow jog 
trot. 

Now he turned off on to the green and made straight 
for the front of the house over leaf-strewn lawns. 

Rachel smiled at the man’s audacity. How furious 
Cousin Florence would be! 

The man seemed to be a kind of tramp. His head was 
bare and very wild, and his collar turned up about his 
neck. His hands were deep in his trousers pockets, 
and it was clear that he wore no brace. On his arm 
hung what appeared to be a blue towel. 


1 52 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


As he came nearer, jogging among the flower beds, he 
threw up his face to the house. 

Rachel recognized him in a flash, and at the same 
moment saw what he was carrying over his arm. It was 
a shirt! 

The light leaped to her eyes. She threw open the 
window with a gurgle of laughter, and waved to him. 

“I’m coming!” she cried. “I see! Kitson, a needle 
and thread!” 

She rushed down the stairs, through the hall, and 
stopped dead on the threshold of the garden door. 

Lady Florence was before her. 

The autumn lady stood comely and cold, facing the 
intruder. 

He eyed her mildly, his hands in his pockets, his 
trousers slack about his ankles, and his throat and breast- 
bone bare. 

“May I ask, have you come to my house to have a 
bath?” she asked. 

“No,” said John Blunt. “I came to have a button 
sewn on. ” 

He brandished a blue shirt at the girl, and called to her 
over her cousin’s head. 

“Will you?” 

Rachel came toward him with a smile. 

“Of course I will!” she said. “Cousin Florence, 
may I introduce Mr. Blunt? — Lady Florence Bracken- 
hurst. I’m so glad you’ve met at last, ” 


BOOK IV 


THE OTHER MAN 
















































XXII 


LADY FLORENCE WRITES A NOTE 

The autumn lady sat in her boudoir in the octagon 
tower. Her stern and massive face was thoughtful as she 
took up her pen. 

A robin raised its crisp song in a holly underneath the 
window, and gardeners were sweeping up the leaves on 
broad paths. 

Lady Florence rose and looked out over green lawns 
and a silvery-rustling birch. 

She could just see the brown gleam of the drive winding 
through beeches toward the gate. Now and then she 
caught the glimmer of a strawberry cream skirt coming 
slowly up it, and a man’s gray legs walking beside the 
skirt. The legs stopped, the skirt swished and was still. 
Then legs and skirt resumed their motion, this time in 
opposite directions. 

Lady Florence sat down with set lips and wrote, 

Dear Bobo: 

If you don’t want Rachel to marry an Impossible you’d 
better come at once. 

Yours affectionately, 

Baba. 

She dashed a vicious line under the word “impossible” 
and addressed the envelope to Lord Hilly ard. 

155 


156 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


Now that her old nurse was dead, Hilary Hillyard 
was the one person to whom Florence Brackenhurst 
was Baba; and she was the one woman on earth to whom 
the President of the Evangelical Alliance League was 
Bobo. His wife did not call him Bobo, and was unaware 
that anybody did. Florence Brackenhurst was to 
Annie Hillyard “that man- woman: a remote connection 
of my husband.” 

All men knew that Lady Florence had never married: 
none knew why. They never suspected that little 
plump Hilary Hillyard with his paunch, his pomp, and 
ridiculous little ways, had been the cause. Yet it was so. 
Hilary Hillyard had been in fact the one man who more 
than a quarter of a century ago had brought the dreams 
to the heart of noble Florence Brackenhurst — dreams 
of a man to mother, spoil, and scold, and of men children 
in whom she should live again and yet again for ever. 

It had lasted a very little while long ago — that soli- 
tary rainbow gleam in the years of surrounding gray. 
A pebble had stopped all that. It had put a horse down, 
and made one man miss a train, and another lose his 
temper. 

Hilary Hillyard had married as his mother bade him; 
and Florence Brackenhurst’s irascible old father had died 
— when it was too late. 

Forthwith she had been immersed in the management 
of a great estate; but the romance and mystery which so 
few suspected had never faded from her life: for hers 
was a faithful heart and deep. 

The autumn lady went into the hall with her note. 


LADY FLORENCE WRITES A NOTE 157 


Rachel was entering, plain yet beautiful under her 
broad-brimmed garden hat, her two tendril curls astray 
on her broad forehead. 

She looked up at her cousin with dark eyes, rather 
timid. 

It was clear she was uncertain what her reception 
was to be. 

“I’ve been down in the village giving the children 
sweets,” she said shyly, swaying gently like an anchored 
ship on an invisible sea. 

The elder woman trooped on cold as a shadow to the 
letter box. 

“You seem to me to spend your life in the village 
street nowadays giving sweets to the children,” she 
said harshly. “Their stomachs must be coated with 
unwholesomeness.” 

The girl hung her head. 

“You met that man of course?” continued the other 
with brutal directness. 

The girl wound about her, slight and clinging as a 
cloud. 

“Now, Cousin Florence!” she coaxed, dabbing at the 
other’s mouth. 

The autumn lady tossed back her beautiful head, dis- 
engaging. 

“No, Rachel,” she said through half-smothered lips. 
“I disapprove. It’s not fair to him. A man in that 
class doesn’t understand. You can’t expect him to. 
He’s not like one of ourselves. The middle class can’t 
play. They think it’s wrong — and I’m not sure they 
aren’t right for once. Besides they can’t do it — they 


158 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


haven’t got it in ’em. It takes a gentleman to be gallant. 
No, you're all right. It’s him you’re hurting.” 

The girl dropped the other’s arm, and the elder woman 
plunged her dagger into the heart warm and bare and 
quivering so close to her own. 

“It’s happened before, Rachel, remember.” 

The girl turned white and trailed away, looking like a 
rain-dashed rose. 

When she came down for dinner she was very subdued. 

She wandered about the windows and outskirts of the 
great room looking out on her ruffled sister-trees, surging 
mournfully under gray skies; then, approaching her 
cousin from behind she kissed her. 

The other’s eyes softened. 

“You’re very forgiving, Rachel,” she said gently. 

The girl sniffed in her ear. 

“Darling Cousin Florence, I wish you’d understand,” 
she murmured. 

The autumn lady lifted the girl’s fingers to her lips 
with a large and noble grace : then she led her in to dinner. 

Next morning Rachel sat bareheaded on the terrace, 
darning a man’s gray stockings. 

The sun blessed her slim blossoming April loveliness; 
the wind played airily with the truant curls a-blow on her 
brow; and the swallows with swift cries skimmed busily 
to and fro weaving their invisible gossamer web about 
her beauty to entangle it and make it their own. 

Every now and then, as she bowed her head over her 
work, she chuckled like a rivulet. 


LADY FLORENCE WRITES A NOTE 159 


Lady Florence, massive bosomed, bareheaded too, 
and beautiful in her October way, came marching grimly 
down the terrace, her feet firm-planted in broad-toed 
shoes, brandishing a terra-cotta coloured envelope. 

“Your guardian’s coming, young lady,” she said 
sternly, eyes on the stockings — “ and quite time too.” 

The girl threw back her head and bubbled delicious 
laughter, shaking out the stockings without a suggestion 
of defiance. 

“Oh, Cousin Florence, you are too funny,” she cried. 

“You want a strong hand over you, my lady,” retorted 
the other grimly. “That’s what you want.” 

“I’m sure you’re dragon enough for anybody. Cousin 
Florence,” laughed the girl. 

“You’ve got neither father, nor mother, nor brothers, 
nor sisters,” replied the other, “and you want looking 
after. You young ladies nowadays think you know 
everything — then you come smash and run to us 
elders to pick up the bits when it’s too late. You’re a 
■prey — that’s what you are : a prey to your own igno- 
rance and conceit and impulsiveness. And unless we 
old folks look pretty sharp after you, you’ll be on the 
rocks before you know where you are. I’m glad 
Hilary’s coming.” 

“So’m I,” said the girl. “He’s rather a duck in his 
funny little way.” 

Lady Florence looked down at her and snorted. 

The girl’s dark head was bent over the gray stockings. 


XXIII 


LORD HILLYARD 

That evening, as the shadows began to lengthen, a large 
white waistcoat descended from a dusty car at the door 
of the Hall and paddled solemnly up the steps. 

Lord Hilly ard had motored over from the Yorkshire 
moor on which he was shooting, and the blue marl of the 
Pennine Hills yet daubed the body and wheels of his car. 

Lady Florence was in the hall, even at the door, to 
greet him. 

“I’m so glad you’ve come, Hilary,” she said, taking 
him by the arm. 

The little man’s eyes were round behind gold-rimmed 
pince-nez — rounder even than usual. His mouth was 
round, too, his stomach round, and the little legs 
that bore it, round and very short: he was round all 
over. In a word. Lord Hilly ard was plump; plump 
yet somehow spry. 

“ My dear girl, what is it? ” he panted in a round voice. 

She led the way to a window of the drawing room and 
pointed. 

A gray-headed man and a girl were knocking croquet 
balls about on a lower lawn under elms tumbling mas- 
sively against the blue and white as the wind flowed 
through them in rousing flood. 

160 


LORD HILLYARD 


161 


“ That’s it,” she said. “I’m an old woman because of it.” 

She was half a head taller than he, and her hand was 
on his shoulder. 

He put up his gold-rimmed pince-nez somewhat pom- 
pously, and his little eyes began to twinkle. 

“He looks a grandfatherly old thing enough, my deah,” 
he said in his slow, mouthing, one-word-a-minute way. 
“What’s his name? and where does he come from? and 
all about him?” 

Lady Florence sat down at the tea-table. 

“He says his name’s Blunt. I believe he comes from 
the Suburbs — wherever they may be.” 

Lord Hillyard sat opposite her like an up-ended egg. 

His little feet were shod in patent-leather; a gold chain 
was strung across his white waistcoat; and his chubby 
legs were tight in immaculate gray dittoes. Lord Hill- 
yard never walked where he could drive or stood where 
he could sit. He sat even to slaughter birds, which he 
did with consummate skill. 

“The Subarbs!” he said, pursing his lips. “There is 
such a place to my certain knowledge. Our secretary, 
the secretary of the league, lives there — Mistah — ah — 
Withahs: Glengarry, Albertah Crescent, Maidah Vale. 
You get there by undahground, I undahstand.” 

Lady Florence’s eyes were down as she poured. She 
listened like a girl who waits her hidden playfellow’s 
cuckoo. Her face stirred with the glimmer of a smile 
that welled up from her inward deeps like the bubblings 
and brimmings of a spring issuing in the heart of an 
inland lake. 

Lady Florence was with Lord Hillyard as she was with 


162 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


no one else, but only Rachel ever noticed it. With him 
she ceased to be the mistress of the Scar Hall estate : she 
was a woman, a mating woman who had found her mate 
and yet somehow missed motherhood. 

Lord Hillyard’s eyes never left her face. He crossed 
his short fat legs and folded his hands. 

“Baba,” he said quietly. 

His eyes twinkled, and his voice was low. 

All trace of affectation had left it suddenly. 

The colour flecked the other’s weathered face like a 
gleam of spring in mid-autumn. 

The word, and the way he said it, had struck the 
deepest chord in her deep heart. 

“Bobo,” she murmured, her eyelids down. 

Lord Hillyard folded his plump hands on his paunch. 
The pince-nez dropped from his nose and dangled. 

“Baba,” he chuckled, and leaned forward like a robin 
courting. 

Lady Florence lifted a reproving finger to her lips. 

“Annie!” she said. 

The autumn lady was instinct with that lovely sanity 
which is the soul of England, because it is the soul of 
England’s women. Loyal to law, loyal to Womanhood 
and its dear trust that she might not share, loyal not 
least to a woman she despised, who had robbed her un- 
consciously of her man, never given to that man the heir 
she could have given him, and made him as unhappy as 
it was in the power of any one to make unhappy that 
robin-hearted little rascal, long ago Lady Florence had 
laid her body, soul, and spirit, a splendid if reluctant 
sacrifice, upon the Altar of the Race. 


LORD HILLYARD 


163 


Lord Hillyard sat back in his chair and looked out of 
the window on wind-stirred green, and blue daubed with 
drifting white, and noisy with rooks home-going in the 
evening. 

“And how long has this been going on?” he asked, 
resuming his normal and pompous voice. 

“Oh, I don’t know — ages.” 

“And how did you first stumble upon him, may I 
ask?” 

“Why, he insulted me as I was cornin’ out of church 
one day,” cried Lady Florence briskly. “Stood in the 
road and bawled at me — bawled at me as I was never 
bawled at in me life before. . . . Then he forced his 

way up here somehow and he’s been here ever since. 
I thought he was just a grandfatherly old thing she wanted 
to be kind to. My dear, he calls her 4 My dear , ’ and she 
calls him 4 Blunt/ or ( old man Blunt.’” 

She rattled out her grievances, revelling in them. 

Lord Hillyard pressed his finger tips together. 

44 And his name is Blunt?” 

“Yes. Blunt — and he takes a pride in acting up to 
it. He insults you every other time he meets you and 
thinks it fine. He’s that sort of man.” She set her 
teeth. 44 Wants a horsewhipping. That’s what he 
wants. And what’s more, he’ll get it too some day, 
please God.” 

44 The name seems somehow familiah,” said Lord 
Hillyard. 44 Is he one of the Sussex Blunts, I 
wondah?” 

44 Not he,” snorted Lady Florence. 44 He’s nobody — 
and never will be, as I told him. Absolutely unpre- 


164 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

sent able. Not a pretence — not a pretence , my dear 
boy.” 

Lord Hilly ard dropped his eyelids. 

“He is not one of us then.” 

Lady Florence looked like a teased girl. 

“Shut up* Hilary,” she said. “You and Rachel are 
a pair.” 

He took some opera-glasses from the table and gazed 
through the window. 

“He’s not a bad-lookin’ feller,” he said, “only he’s 
old and gray.” 

“He’s about your age, I fancy,” replied the other with 
the directness peculiar to her. “But he’s as shaggy as a 
bear while you’re as bald as an egg.” 

“Perhaps he ain’t done my thinking,” replied the 
little peer, unperturbed. “I see he wears no hat. Is he 
conceited? ” 

“He must be,” snapped Lady Florence, “goin’ about 
like that all the time, makin’ himself conspicuous. I 
could smack his face every time I meet him.” She was 
brisk and rough as a hobbledehoy of fifteen. “I hate a 
man who can’t be like everybody else. With that great 
fluff of hair of his! And it’s my firm belief” — she tapped 
her foot upon the ground — “he’s bald on the top. . . 

Only,” she added with girlish regret, “I’m not tall enough 
to see.” 

Lord Hillyard began to twinkle again. 

“And how does Rachel take to him?” 

“ Oh, you know what Rachel is — with her enthusiasms 
and impulses. She’s a true Carmelite — not like other 
people. It’s the foreign blood in her. She likes out-of- 


LORD HILLYARD 


165 


the-way people and gets on with them. A genuine Bohe- 
mian if ever there was one — reads a lot: George Meredith, 
and Jack Robinson, and that sort of person. Turns 
up her nose at Tennyson! Of course it fills her with all 
sorts of silly notions. And as I often tell her from the 
way she goes on she might not be ” 

“One of us,” interposed Lord Hillyard. “And him?” 

“Oh, I told him point-blank she wasn’t for him. At 
least I told him she’d twenty thousand a year and 
three places, and was the most sought after girl of the 
day.” 

“What did he say?” 

“He said, if you please: ‘7 know. She told me , poor 
child.'” 

Lord Hillyard grunted. 

“Quite the confidante, eh! And what do they do 
together?” 

“ Why, he walks her up and down that grass walk where 
I can’t see’ em,” replied Lady Florence vindictively, 
“and rants, and rants , and RANTS.” 

“What does he rant about?” 

“My dear boy, the man’s a rank Socialist — rank!” 
squealed Lady Florence. “Here, in my garden, if you 
please, beneath me very nose!” She flung an indignant 
hand at him. “As I tell him he’ll be standing on a 
stump and addressing my gardeners next.” Her 
eyes were flashing. “The cheek of it! — the cheek! 
And his mother scarcely cold in her grave, and never 
a thread of crape on him from head to foot — never a 
thread.” 

The dignified lady of the Hall had grown slangy as a 


166 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


school girl in her indignation. She was breathing deep, 
and was red and white with emotion. All her bristles 
were on end and she was trembling. Socialism was to 
her what Protestantism had been to the Holy Inquisition. 
She would spit the word radical out of her mouth as 
though it were a filthy thing, snarling it with the bitter 
and passionate scorn with which the men who stoned 
St. Stephen must have snarled the word Christian . 

Lord Hilly ard rose. 

“Shall we go out?” he said. “Mac, how are you? 
Come along, fat boy.” 

The autumn lady and her lover stepped out into the 
evening. 

It was mid September. Everywhere was the delicious 
fragrance of the tide upon the turn, the tide of nature 
ebbing into that great ocean whence it flowed in the 
spring. The lovely autumn time was rich with orange 
and gold; golden wasps by day, orange moon by night, 
red and golden fruit dripping on orange-lichened walls; 
behind the dark bars of elm and beech an orange sunset, 
and a rose with orange buds clambering up the front of 
the house. Huge sunflowers, tiger lilies, red-hot pokers 
in burning clumps, and deep-hearted dahlias, flamed and 
flickered along the borders in glorious array. For months 
the sun had been blazing down upon green leaves, and 
now there was a saffron glow on trees and shrubs and 
flowers. Here and there huge masses of lavender gloomed 
like thunder clouds with posies of Michaelmas daisies 
flecking their darkness. There was a solemn radiance 
everywhere; a mellow joy, matured, tranquil, and tri- 
umphant, differing from the ecstasy of the spring as 


LORD HILLYARD 


167 


Faith differs from Hope, the Man from the Boy, but 
not less beautiful and somehow more enduring. 

The ruffled lady, the surly dog, and the little plump 
man, spick and span in white waistcoat, creaseless trou- 
sers, and shining boots, strolled out into the garden. 

Rachel came running to them across the lawn. 

“Dear Uncle Hilary!” she cried. 

The little man toddled forward to meet her with 
outspread arms, looking like a duck which stands upon 
its tail in the water to flap his wings. 

“My dear, dear child,” he murmured, embracing her 
with such energy that his pince-nez tumbled off his nose. 

“What a fuss!” said Lady Florence irritably. “You 
mightn’t have met for years the way you go on.” 

“This is our friend, Mr. Blunt,” said the girl, with- 
drawing from his arms, “Lord Hillyard.” 

The shaggy, shabby man gave a taciturn nod, and the 
white waistcoat inclined slightly toward him. 

“Don’t let me disturb you young people at your game 
of ball,” said the little peer with a wave. “I’m going 
round the garden with Lady Florence.” 

He strolled off among the shrubs, his little feet shining 
black upon the green, and the tall lady at his side. 

“He’s one of the dearest little things,” murmured the 
girl to her companion. “You’ll love him. He is so 
simple in spite of his affectations. He talks like this when 
he remembers — I-am-Lord-Hillyahd-of -Hilly ahd — / He 
says it’s how lords talk on the stage, and he supposes 
they know. And he walks like this.” She showed him. 
“Of course, he’s rather a little rogue, you know. He’s 
president of the Evangelical Alliance League and he 


168 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


only does it to spite his wife who’s very High. He’s 
not a bit pi’ really. ” 

Half an hour later the two men met at the gate. 

They walked down the hill together. Lord Hillyard 
pattering plump and sprightly beside his long-striding, 
shabby, great companion. 

“Your name seems very familiah, Mistah Blunt?” 
said the little man. He threw up eyes bright as a bird’s 
and glanced at the other through shining pince-nez. 

The Spirit of Resistance flickered sullenly in the 
other’s eyes. 

“My name is Blunt,” he replied, slouching along. “I 
come from Hampstead. My income is three hundred odd 
a year unearned and a bit more earned. My father was 
a doctor; my mother was middle class. And ” 

“ — your manners are — damnable,” flashed the little 
peer. 

He drew up short, pierced the other with gimlet eyes, 
and turned sharply about. 

John Blunt trudged sheepishly home and passed the 
evening nursing Pip in the gloom, while the dark woman 
clattered in the kitchen or glow'ered at him ominously 
through the crack of the door. 

He had been a rude little boy and he knew it. 


XXIV 


BOBO AND BABA 

It was eleven o’clock at night. 

Lord Hillyard sat in the most comfortable chair in the 
smoking room, his shirt front bulging and one diamond 
star ablaze in it. 

“The man’s a barbarian,” he said in his precise and 
pompous way. “I could have punched him.” 

There was no irritation in his voice; and he puffed 
leisurely at his cigar. 

“You, you little thing!” scoffed Lady Florence with 
kind scorn. “You dare to touch him — that’s all. Why, 
he’s like a savage. He threw Tom Tyson at the Stone- 
ford Bridge wrestling the other day. All the village 
is agape about it, and Tom’s drowning his defeat in beer. 
I’m going down to-morrow to have a talk with him.” 

The little man puffed. 

“I won’t hurt him, my dear,” he said quietly. “I 
like him too much. He’s barbarous and therefore rare. It 
makes such a change in these smooth, clean-shaven days.” 

The autumn lady poured his dole of brandy into 
a glass, measuring it shrewdly, and squirted foam into 
the gold. 

“I shall tell Rachel he insulted you,” she said com- 
fortably. 

169 


170 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“My dear,” replied the little man, “I’ve told her 
already. I said, ‘ Rachel, your bear has scratched me.’” 

“What did she say?” 

“She said, ‘It’s all right, Uncle Hilary. I’m cutting 
his claws — only it takes time.’ And then she made a 
great fuss and asked me where the scratch was and when 
I said my heart, she kissed my waistcoat with passion.” 

Lady Florence flashed and trembled. 

“She’ll twiddle you all right, my boy, I see. Ha! ha!” 
she laughed harshly. “I knew she would. If I don’t 
stand up against her, we’re lost.” 

The breeze that had stirred the lady’s calm reached 
Lord Hillyard. 

He cocked a wary robin eye at the ruffled woman. 

Really Florence was getting very ridiculous about 
Rachel ! 

“Sit down, my dear,” he said. “The child’s gone to 
bed, hasn’t she?” 

There was a stamp on the floor above them. 

“There! That’s Kitson tucking her up now. I must 
just run up and kiss her.” 

At the door the autumn lady stayed, downcast as a 
bird after an April storm, and threw mute, penitent eyes 
at the little man in black and white filling the great 
chair by the fire. 

He nodded at her friendly, for Lord Hillyard had the 
great heart. 

In a few minutes Lady Florence came down again. 
A bed candle was in her hand, and some work over 
her arm. 


BOBO AND BABA 171 

She entered the room guiltily and stole across to a 
chair as one fearful lest she should he heard. 

“I don’t know what the dad would say,” she whispered, 
“me in here at this time of night,” as she stood beneath 
the shadow of the one man she had ever feared — a 
splendid and arrogant figure in Dundreary whiskers and 
the flying hussar jacket of the Cumberland Yeomanry. 

Lord Hillyard blew rings and speared them with 
his cigar. 

“Where is Dalbignac?” he asked. 

“He’s on manoeuvres still, I suppose. I wired him an 
invitation a week ago, and wrote again last Tuesday and 
told him as plainly as I could that if he wanted her he’d 
better buck up.” 

Alone with Lord Hillyard she dropped all her airs of 
the Lady of the Manor and became again the simple, 
slangy girl he had known her first thirty years ago. 

“But I’ve heard nothing yet. So I suppose he can’t 
get away. You know how keen a soldier he is.” 

The little man nodded. 

“Have they been corresponding, d’you know?” 

“I know she’s written to him once. I saw the letter.” 

“Said anything?” 

“Not a word to me. She’s never told me of any of 
her affairs but one, when she couldn’t help herself. I 
think she thinks I’ve no experience.” 

She drooped. Lord Hillyard said nothing. The girl 
had told him of her affairs; at least of some of them. 

“One thing she did say,” continued Lady Florence. 
“She said she’d never do another season again: the men 
make such unutterable beasts of themselves — proposing 


172 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


after one dance and that sort of thing. It sickens her — 
a girl brimming with romance like that. I know what it 
is — I’ve had some experience even up here, and I never 
did a season after I came in. It does sicken one a bit.” 

The other’s eyes twinkled behind his pince-nez. 

“We ain’t much good, we men,” he said. “We love 
our bellies overmuch. There’s no room for soul.” He 
tapped the ash off his cigar. “To return to her and 
Dalbignac. Everybody was agog with it in London. 
They danced so much together.” 

Lady Florence nodded. 

“There’s been a dance card on her mantel-piece with 
a little D opposite seven dances, and at the foot the word, 
glorious. I suppose it’s going to be.” She glanced up 
at the little man opposite her, wetting her thread. “I 
suppose George Dalbignac’s sound, Bobo?” 

The other spouted forth a long stream of smoke. 

“I suppose so, my dear. I’ve only met him twice — 
at Charlotte Lindsay’s. He’s very good-looking, of course. 
They all are.” He took his cigar from his mouth. “ They 
tell me he ain’t very popular in the Guards.” 

“Jealous, perhaps,” said the lady. “He’s done so well.” 

The other shrugged and puffed. 

“It’s time she got married,” he said. “She’s been out 
a long time now.” 

They talked together for a time with the ease and 
simplicity of two souls who have lived in each other’s 
hearts for thirty years: of Rachel, of themselves, touching 
on great affairs always to drift again into the intimate 
familiar nothings of perhaps the highest kind of human 
intercourse. 


BOBO AND BABA 


173 


At last Lady Florence gathered her work together. 

“Twelve o’clock! I say, I must pack off to bed.” 

She rose, winding her wool, and looked down on him 
with the soft smile nobody but the man beneath had ever 
seen on the face of Florence Brackenhurst. 

Had her enemies, who were fond of asserting that she 
had no heart, seen her at that moment, they would never 
again have denied that Florence Brackenhurst could love. 

Sitting plump beneath her, his face upraised to hers, 
it came in upon Hilary Hillyard suddenly and with 
extraordinary instancy that but for something the reason 
for which he had never rightly understood, he would be 
saying: 

“I’ll come in a minute, my dear.” 

“Be good, Bobo,” murmured the rich voice above him. 

He lifted his hands for hers. 

She fenced with him, the lace falling in cascades from 
her bare and beautiful arms. 

He dropped his hands, and the pince-nez fell from his 
nose. His eyes were in hers. That gracious smile still 
played about her face. 

He pouted his lips, and tapped them with his forefinger. 

She trembled ever so little. 

“Annie,” she whispered, lifting a reproving finger. 

“Hang Annie!” he answered softly, and fluttered with 
his arms. 

She bent above him. He put up his hands. She 
slapped them tenderly aside, and kissed his bald scalp 
between two shiny bumps. 

“That’s my place,” she murmured. “I’m not poach- 
ing there.” 


174 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


Then she trailed away with her candle and her work. 
He followed her with shining eyes. 

In the door she looked back, and the smile was still 
on her face, mysterious and most sweet. 

“My dear,” he said, “what a mucker we should have 
come — but for you.” 


XXV 


THE COMING OF THE GUARDSMAN 

Next morning the autumn lady sat in her boudoir 
after breakfast with a little pile of letters at her side. 

She ran through them with scrutinizing eyes till she 
came to one bearing on it the crest and motto of the 
Guards. 

She opened it swiftly and read. 

“Good!” she cried, skipped to the smoking room, and 
peeped round the door. 

The Times was spread before the most comfortable 
chair. A bald crown shone above it, and two short fat 
legs tight in gray dittoes shewed beneath. 

“He’s coming!” she whispered loudly. 

Lord Hillyard dropped his paper and looked at her 
over his pince-nez. 

“He’s coming!” she repeated, a grin of girlish triumph 
on her face. “Now I shall warn Blunt he’s not wanted 
any more.” 

“Be careful, my dear girl. Don’t get his back up. 
That man’s dangerous when he’s roused.” 

“Oh, I’ll go aisy, my son.” 

His eyes were on her, but his thoughts were clearly 
far away. 

“Any news?” she asked. 

175 


176 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“There’s this row going on about the Morning Chronicle 
Commission and the Frensham Estate. Three columns 
of correspondence and a leading article. Charlie Fren- 
sham’s written himself now, and gives himself away all 
along the line. Ass of a boy! What’s he want to write 
at all if he can’t do better than that?” 

Lady Florence stood in the door. 

“What’s it all about? — what’s Charlie Frensham 
done? — what is the Morning Chronicle Commission?” 

The little man hid behind his paper. 

“My dear,” he said shortly, “you may have 
the paper and read it for yourself — when I’ve done 
with it.” 

“Tiddle — tiddle — tiddle! ” mocked the lady. “He’s 
never quite himself till after luncheon!” and she skipped 
away to become sedate and sixty as she saw Rachel com- 
ing down the stairs, slow and stitching. 

The girl looked up from her work. A pussy-kitten 
smile eddied about her lips, and there was something 
sweet and shy and mischievous about the eyes that 
dwelt upon her cousin. 

“How blooming you look, Cousin Florence,” she said 
softly. “And how delightful to see you skip!” 

A breath of colour blew across the other’s face. 

Lady Florence waved the letter in her hand. 

“Major Dalbignac’s got a fortnight’s leave and is 
coming up here for a few days,” she said casually. 

The girl descended the stairs and joined her. 

“Is he?” she said quietly. “I’m glad.” And it was 
impossible to tell from the way she said it whether there 
lay anything behind the words or not. 


THE COMING OF THE GUARDSMAN 177 


“Come down to the village,” said Lady Florence. 
“I must send him a wire.” 

“I can’t,” replied the girl. “I’m finishing old man 
Blunt’s shirt.” 

She held it up. 

“Oh, bother Blunt!” said Lady Florence. “You’ve 
got a playfellow after your own heart now.” 

The girl darted up soft, teasing eyes. 

“And so’ve you, Cousin Florence.” 

The elder woman flashed at her indignantly, then 
dropped her eyes suddenly, trembled and turned away, 
crimson and white. 

The girl put a caressing finger beneath the other’s chin. 

“How beautiful you look when you blush, Cousin 
Florence,” she purred half tender, half teasing. 

The autumn lady hung her head, limp as a dew- 
drenched lily. 

“Oh, Rachel!” she whimpered, as one crying for mercy. 

The girl kissed her passionately. 

“Darling, darling little Cousin Florence!” she whis- 
pered in the other’s ear, and shone through April showers. 

The two women, so like and so unlike, clung to each 
other with troubled bosoms, clung and swayed like 
flowers caught in the same gust and clashed together. 

Lady Florence walked down the village alone, and 
so briskly that Mac gave it up and sitting down oppo- 
site the Brackenhurst Arms lifted up his nose and howled. 

In the village Lady Florence met John Blunt emerging 
from a cottage, note-book in hand and with brooding 
brows. 


178 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


All the old suspicions came crowding back on her. 

She stopped dead. 

“I hope you find everything to your satisfaction, Mr. 
Blunt,” she said with a smile like a sword. 

He joined her thoughtfully, shoving his note-book into 
his pocket. 

“I find everything a great deal better than I expected,” 
he answered. 

She bobbed him a mocking courtesy. 

“I’m just going to send a wire,” she said, showing her 
teeth. “Lady Rachel’s got a playfellow coming. She’s 
overjoyed, poor child. She’s been so lonely with no 
one of her own age and 'position to play with.” She 
dabbed a spiteful emphasis on the word position . “And 
they’re such friends — such very great friends. Really 
I forget how many times she didn’t say she’d danced with 
him this season. And he’s such a dear fellow!” 

“What!” said he. “Dalbignac?” 

She looked up at him sharply. 

What did he know of Dalbignac? 

“ Daubignac” she corrected him. Daubignac, it’s 
pronounced. The Devonshire Dalbignacs you — know.” 

“No, I don’t,” said John Blunt. “Why should I?” 

Lady Florence drew in her breath with a sharp hiss. 

“They’re pretty well known, I believe — by anybody 
who is anybody, that is.” 

The Spirit of Resistance in each of them called and 
challenged like rutting deer in October. 

“Indeed,” said he, dropping an ear, “what are they 
well known for?” 

Each was drawing all that was worst out of the other. 


THE COMING OF THE GUARDSMAN 179 


and each knew it. Yet both continued, stubborn in 
wrong-doing, like the stupid boy and girl they were. 

“The nice things, you know,” she said, lifting bold 
eyes to his, “the things that matter.” 

“Ah, money, you mean,” replied the other, the Brutal 
Youth in him becoming paramount. “ The Dauby-what’s- 
their names belong to the Plutocracy which likes to pose 
as an Aristocracy, do they?” 

“ Offensive beast!” muttered the lady at his side, and 
raising her voice. “He’s such a brilliant fellow, George 
Dalbignac. As good as he’s beautiful, and universally 
beloved. ” 

The words sped, she knew she had made a fool of 
herself, and flung up a swift eye to see if he would take 
advantage of the opening she had given him. He did 
not, blundering on his own rude way elephant-wise. 

“I know the sort,” he said. 

“Second Son of a Somebody, 

Scion of Lord-Knows-Who, 

Never did nuffin but stuff him with muffin, 

And buck of his blood so blue.” 

Lady Florence was far too angry to be amused. 

“I beg your pardon,” she flashed. “He’s done a good 
deal more than you* re ever likely to do. They talk of 
him as quite the coming man in the Guards. He was a 
brevet-major and D. S. O. at twenty-five, and did wonders 
in South Africa, when you no doubt were sitting in your 
arm-chair at home shouting for the Boers. You see,” 
she added with savage irrelevancy, determined to stab 
him, never mind how, “ it is a pull even in these democratic 
days to be a gentleman. Though of course,” she added 


180 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


with calm and incredible insolence, “a man in your station 
wouldn’t admit it.” 

Lady Florence was used to bearing down thus in furious 
assault upon her antagonists and ramming them or 
routing them. 

On this enemy she made as much impression as a 
pinnace on a man of war, and was aware of it. She felt 
the ignominy of unwonted defeat. The mass of the man 
overcame her. He was impregnable, imperturbable. 
There was no joint in his armour through which she 
could stab him. It was like trying to sink a Dread- 
nought by running pins into it. He was a mountain and 
she was a mole attempting to undermine it. He made her 
feel as she had never felt before her impotence, and above 
all her insignificance. She could have scratched him, 
kicked him, bitten him — anything to wound, move, or 
anger the man. 

And he knew no mercy. Obdurate as iron, he would 
not give to her womanhood; bearing her down with 
the weight of his mute tremendous broadsides. 

For once Lady Florence had met her match. 

In vain she flung herself against the Wall of his Will. 

The silent battle, a battle of the spirit, was of brief 
duration. 

Suddenly she surrendered, and attempted to cover her 
retreat, by babbling details, meaningless and in the main 
imaginary, of the Guardsman’s life. 

He cut her short with a calm, 

“I know all about him.” 

His words and manner braced her to fresh battle. 

“How?” 


THE COMING OF THE GUARDSMAN 181 


“She told me.” 

A white mist invaded the other’s face. 

“What did she tell you?” harshly. 

John Blunt grinned. 

“Never mind,” he answered, and marched on his way. 

Lady Florence stood in the road and looked after him. 

How much did that man know? 

That evening Major Dalbignac, D.S.O., of the Fusilier 
Guards, came: six feet two of him, sun-browned from 
manoeuvres, and fine with hard marching, night attacks, 
and bivouacking out in storm and rain. 

Lady Florence watched the meeting of the two young 
people at tea that evening with anxious interest. 

There was nothing much to see or hear. 

As the girl entered, the tall soldier rose from his chair. 

“Ah, partner!” he cried heartily, and the sun broke 
about his handsome face. 

“Hullo!” she cried. “Here you are!” and bubbled 
up a little jolly laugh. 

Lady Florence had never seen her less shy or more 
frankly friendly. 

“Well?” she said as she walked with Lord Hilly ard 
after tea among the roses, while the two young people 
played tennis. 

“He’s all right,” said the little man. “He’s taken 
it.” 

“And her?” 

He shook his head. 

“She’s a deep un, is Miss Rachel,” he said. 


XXVI 


MAJOR DALBIGNAC, D.S.O. 

It was past eleven, and Rachel was standing at her 
window looking out into the night. 

On the hill opposite against a silver glimmer of sky a 
little dark house squatted like a toadstool. 

Whether her eyes were on it or on the glimmer beyond, 
where the moon was breaking through a tumble of clouds, 
it was hard to say. 

There was a soft brilliance in the girl’s eyes, a subdued 
flush upon her cheek; and her bosom rose and fell beneath 
the lace trimmings of the long night-gown that trailed 
about her feet. 

Once or twice she smiled to herself. 

There came a knock at her door, and Lady Florence 
entered. 

“I’ve come to tuck you up, child, as Kitson’s away for 
the night, ’’she said, and put her arm about the girl’s waist, 
the kindness in her eyes. “What a pace you two young 
people went on! I never did. Chatter, chatter, chatter! 
How your poor Uncle Hilary got on with his Patience 
I can’t think.” 

The girl disengaged herself gently. 

“We were talking over the season,” she said. “I’m 
afraid we did make rather a row. I get so ex- 
182 


MAJOR DALBIGNAC, D.S.O. 183 

cited and forget about everything. And he laughs so 
much.’* 

“My dear child,” said the elder woman. “Hilary 
loves it. So do I.” 

The girl skipped across the room and scrambled into bed. 

The elder woman tucked her up. 

“I love being tucked,” chuckled the girl, shrugging 
cosily. “It reminds me of the nursery and Nanny and 
the days when I was young.” 

“In the days when you were young, indeed !” mocked 
the other, bending over her. “I like that.” 

With one tender finger she drew down the sheet beneath 
the girl’s chin. 

Rachel’s face lay beneath her dark and rich upon the 
white pillow like a bramble leaf upon a bed of snow. 

“I think you must have some Jew in you, my lady,” 
taunted the autumn lady. 

“Oh, Cousin Florence!” cried the girl, “how glorious! 
Do you really think so? Think of the blood of the 
Psalmists singing in one’s veins.” 

Her eyes danced, and she tilted her lips, twittering 
for kisses. 

“I meant it for an insult,” replied the elder woman 
brooding over her. “I wish — I wish somebody could 
see you now.” 

She rustled swiftly away, the laughter leaping mis- 
chievously to her eyes. 

Lady Florence sped down the passage to the west 
wing, opened the door of Lord Hillyard’s room, and took 
up the night socks that were lying on the pillow. 


184 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


Then she went down stairs and stood outside the door 
of the smoking room, listening. 

There were no voices within. 

She entered with a guilty and abashed air as always 
at this time of night, her father’s memory strong upon 
her. 

Major Dalbignac stood before the fire, rolling a ciga- 
rette between his elegant long fingers. His hair was 
thin and very fine. Clean shaven but for a crisp soldier 
moustache, with the sweep of limb and grace of move- 
ment peculiar to the athlete, he had the eagle beak and 
lean features of the best of his class. Withal there was 
something dark and sardonic about him that made some 
men fear and some women love him. 

His men worshipped George Dalbignac. He was for 
them the type of aristocrat. And that little touch of 
the theatrical, the debonair, which made the best of his 
brother officers confide to each other that G. D. in spite 
of his old name wasn’t quite the thing, won him the 
hearts of the simpler soldiery — he'd such a way with 
him, the Major. 

Standing before the fire, his arrowy black limbs ending 
in shining pumps, a finer figure of an English gentleman 
it would have been hard to conceive, his hostess thought. 

“Ah, Lady Florence,” he mumbled, his cigarette 
between his lips, and ran a chair toward her. 

There was absolute self-possession and just a touch of 
easy gallantry in his manner. 

She shook her head. 

“Hilary, here are your night socks,” she said. “I’ve 
just finished ’em; and you’re to wear ’em to-night.” 


MAJOR DALBIGNAC, D.S.O. 185 

Lord Hillyard sat in the most comfortable chair, plump 
and puddingy, his white shirt bulging, and a great cigar 
stopping his mouth. 

“You might have put them in my room, my deah,” 
he said. “You’ll shock Majah Dalbignac.” 

“Oh, I couldn’t go traipsing all along that passage 
at this time of night,” said the lady. “Here you are! ” 

“I wish I’d somebody to make me night socks,” whim- 
pered the Major. 

His own cigarette alight, he offered the cigarette box 
to the lady with an easy questioning grunt. 

She waved it away with a grimace. 

“Lady Florence is very consarvative,” said Lord 
Hillyard, his word-a-minute manner very marked. 

“And quite right too,” grunted the Major. 

“Neither drinks, smokes, nor swears,” continued the 
little peer. “Clubs: none. Town-house : none. Motors: 
none.” 

The Major laughed; and Lady Florence flashed smiling 
eyes at her tormentor. 

“No. I can’t abide all these new-fangled notions,” 
she said. “It’s a comfort to have a girl like Rachel 
stopping in the house whose bedroom doesn’t reek of 
tobacco when one goes into it of mornings.” 

The Major plopped down into a chair, threw back his 
handsome head, and shot his cuffs. 

“I admit I don’t care to see it very much myself,” 
he admitted in his leisurely way. “But they all do it.” 

“Rachel doesn’t.” 

“Rachel’s a bit of a Bohemian,” said Lord Hillyard, 
puffing. “But she’s sound — except politically.” 


186 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“Politically, Hilary!” interposed the lady sharply. 
“What fiddle you talk! As if a chit like that had any 
right to a political opinion — or for the matter of that 
to any opinion at all. She’s like a weathercock. Every 
girl of that age is. Any man who can string a few words 
together can twiddle her.” 

“I thought she seemed a bit shaky at dinner on the 
Licensing Bill,” murmured the Major. 

“It’s that man,” said Lady Florence darkly. 

The pupils of the Major’s eyes sharpened. He blew 
rings quietly. 

“What man’s that?” 

“This Blunt.” 

The Major pricked his ears. 

“Blunt! Not John Blunt. Not the John Blunt. Not 
the Unspeakable.” 

A light came into Lord Hillyard’s face. 

“Oh, the Unspeakable!” he said. “What a dolt I’ve 
been!” 


XXVII 


THE UNSPEAKABLE 

Lady Florence looked from one man to the other. 

“I don’t know about the John Blunt,” she said sharply. 
“John Blunt’s the man’s name and unspeakable he cer- 
tainly is. What about him? Who is he?” 

The Major shrouded himself in a cloud of smoke. 

“Who is he? Who isn’t he, you mean? He’s the 
powder at the back of this accursed Radical government : 
the Socialist publicist and parliamentary correspondent 
to the Morning Chronicle , and doing more harm to the 
country than all the Keir-Hardies and Victor Graysons 
put together. Don’t you know that lying little pamph- 
let of his, ‘Plain Words for Working Men ?’ 

Lady Florence drew her breath between her teeth. 

“ Plain Lies for Working Jackasses!” she muttered. 
“How they can be such doited idiots as to believe such 
trash. ” 

“Have you read it, my deah?” asked Lord Hillyard. 

“Read it!” snorted Lady Florence. “I wouldn’t 
touch the thing at the end of a pair of tongs. I’ve seen 
it lying about on book stalls — that’s enough for me. 
Pack o’ lies! And they call ’emselves Englishmen!” 
Her bosom heaved. 

Dalbignac took up his tale. 

187 


188 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“Then he wrote that play there was the row about 
in the spring — don’t you remember? ‘The House of 
Mammon.’ The censor rejected it. ” 

“And quite right too,’ snorted Lady Florence. 

“Mosht right,” said Lord Hillyard sleepily. “Mosht 
right indeed. And — ah — what was it about?” 

“The House of Lords — The House of Mammon — 
don’t you see? Pretty idea, ain’t it? Such good taste.” 

Lady Florence stamped her foot. 

“ Monstrous 1” she hissed. “Monstrous! That’s just 
the way he goes on to Rachel. Semi-religious, you know. 
Such cant , I call it! A man like that. When we all 
know he’s practically an atheist.” 

The Major blew a stream of smoke out of the corner 
of his mouth, and his eyes were thoughtful. 

“Does seem a bit thick,” he said dispassionately, “con- 
sidering his private character.” 

Lady Florence looked at him sharply. 

Lord Hillyard opened an eye. 

“Indeed, is that so?” he asked. 

“All I know is he broke his poor old mother’s heart,” 
replied the soldier. 

Lord Hillyard shut his eye. 

“Ah, you know that,” he said blandly. “Most intah- 
resting.” 

The soldier wagged his handsome head and continued 
rather acridly. 

“Well, I mean you can ask anybody.” He sat back 
and looked beautiful and melancholy, gazing into the 
fire. “I mean I hope I — I’m not the sort of man to 
take away another man’s character, I mean.” 


THE UNSPEAKABLE 


189 


Lord Hilly ard snored sweetly. 

The soldier glanced at him and leaning forward shook 
off his cigarette ash into the grate. 

“I mean you can’t get away from the facts. There 
it was in the papers. I saw it myself — her death and 
funeral, and all about it. Beside it’s well known — has 
been for years.” 

“But what a liar the man is!” shrilled Lady Florence. 
“He got round Rachel in the first place by saying his 
mummy was dead and he was broken-hearted — or some 
cant! And now this turns up.” 

Dalbignac grunted sardonically. 

“Oh, that’s nothing to our friend. He killed a man 
with his hands in South Africa when he was a young 
chap, and glories in it.” 

“Then he ought to be hung!” cried Lady Florence 
swift as lightning. “Why isn’t he? Radical Jobbery, 
I suppose.” 

The soldier shrugged. 

“Pleaded his temper perhaps. It seems to take him 
in gusts. When he was member for Pontefract he went 
for George Hartop on the floor of the House — don’t 
you remember? and had to go over it — Oh, the man’s 
a savage and no mistake.” He puffed. “But how 
did you come across him?” 

Lady Florence snorted. 

“Come across him! Why, my dear man, he insulted 
me as I was cornin’ out o’ church. Stood in the road and 
swore at me — swore , as I was never sworn at in me life 
before.” 

The soldier nodded. 


190 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“That’s him!” he said. “That’s the Unspeakable.” 

“Then Rachel picked him up on the sea shore, and he 
fed her up with this lie about his mother. And of course 
she took it all in like the innocent she is : though as I said 
at the time, I said, ‘/f his mother's dead ,’ I said, ‘ where's 
his crape ? Show me his crape'." She displayed her 
beautiful hand. “Then he forced his way up here some- 
how. I thought at first he was a harmless old thing with 
a screw loose. Not a pretence at a gentleman, of course — 
not a pretence." 

“He is not one of us, you undahstand,” murmured 
Lord Hilly ard, nodding in his sleep. 

Lady Florence’s face, which had been hard and white 
and bitter, softened momentarily. 

“You go to sleep, little man,” she said severely. “No 
manners, no breedin’, no nothin’,” she continued. 
“ The most really impossible person I ever met. Doesn’t 
know anything or anybody one knows, you know — that 
sort of person: only the most hopeless specimen I ever 
came across.” 

The Guardsman nodded. 

“The Lord-knows-who from God-knows- where kind o’ 
man,” said he. “I know the sort. Lots of ’em about. 
They’re regrettable but in the main innocuous. This 
chap isn’t.” He crossed his legs. “ But what’s the great 
J. B. doing up here? That’s what I want to know. 
That kind of man’s always making mischief wherever he 
is. He thinks it’s what he’s there for.” 

Lady Florence enlarged upon the camera and the 
note-book. She reported Gregory’s reports and added 
vindictive detail of her own. 


THE UNSPEAKABLE 


191 


Dalbignac had risen to his feet. 

“By Jove! by George! and by Jimini!” he cried, waving 
his cigarette a thought theatrically. “I’ve got it. 
I remember now. Mr. John Blunt — Our Commissioner 
for West Cumberland . He’s doing you .” 

Lady Florence’s eyes started. 

“Doing Me! what ye mean?” 

“Why, it’s this blessed so-called commission of the 
Morning Chronicle. The Country Estates Commission, 
it calls itself.” 

Lady Florence, immersed in local affairs, rarely 
read anything but the local paper, with Punch to keep 
her broad. 

What was this commission? Was it official? She had 
thought commissions were government things. 

The Major explained. No, it was not exactly official. 
But the Morning Chronicle was the official organ of this 
beastly government, and it was running this commission 
preparatory to the Rural Housings Bill which was going 
to be introduced next session. 

He stood before the fire, his feet wide, and dealt with 
the commission of the Chronicle and its method — a 
method new in English politics: the singling out of 
individual landlords, and attacking them ferociously and 
at length in signed articles. The lime-light was suddenly 
switched on one man or one woman. For a while he — 
or she — lived in the blaze of that light, naked and 
conspicuous. His — or her — private life, personal char- 
acter, wealth — how acquired, and how spent : nothing 
was spared and much invented, according to the Major, 
who exemplified the new method by the now famous case 


192 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


of Lord Frensham, on which he enlarged wittily and well, 
parodying paragraphs in which the absenteeism, irre- 
sponsibility, and immorality of that peccant peer were 
exposed: 

Here was a man who was responsible to the people for the 
administration of half a county, who hadn’t been near the 
place for a year. . . . 

Position without responsibility was the motto of him and 
all the leech class as it had been of the same class in France 
before the Revolution. 

One of the Stately Homes of England to sentimentalize over 
but by no means to live in. A few swagger week-end parties; 
a big shoot or two in the autumn; and — London in the season; 
Scotland in the autumn; Egypt in the winter; and the Riviera 
or the Pyrenees in the spring. . . . 

“But why doesn’t Lord Frensham run him in for libel? ” 
gasped Lady Florence. 

Dalbignac waved his cigarette airily and continued to 
speechify. 

This man, and the leech class from which he springs, have 
betrayed the Trust the People have reposed in them. There- 
fore it is time that they should go. Let the People see to it. 

Lady Florence was panting. 

“If it’s true,” she said, “if there’s a word of truth in 
it, then all I can say is Lord Frensham is worse than a 
traitor to the people — he’s a traitor to his caste.” 

Major Dalbignac waved his cigarette airily. 

“Then, if you please,” he continued, “Charlie Frens- 
ham, like the ass he is, must go and write to the Times 
and say he hadn’t been near the place because he’d 


THE UNSPEAKABLE 


193 


been serving his country in heathen lands. And it turned 
out he’d been big-game shooting in East Africa.” 

He laughed cheerily and blew a great cloud of smoke 
and stared into it. 

“And now no doubt our friend J. B. is going to serve 
you as the other feller served Charlie Frensham.” 

Lady Florence was heaving. 

It was some time before she spoke. 

“Next time I meet him,” she said with clenched teeth. 
“That’s all.” 


XXVIII 


A SOUL SPEAKS 

She had not to wait long for her encounter. 

Next morning as she paced through the village, her 
knitting in her hand, Mac padding surly and slow behind, 
she saw a gray man disappear down an alley at the back 
of the clump of cottages on the bank above the pump. 

The alley was blind, and the man must come out 
the way he had gone in. 

Lady Florence waited at the foot of the bank, doing 
sentry-go before it. Her face was rather white and her 
lips drawn back. The knitting-needles flashed in her 
hand as she worked. Those who knew Lady Florence 
would have recognized that she was flying the signal 
for General Engagement. 

After a little time John Blunt emerged from the alley, 
bareheaded, and stood on the bank above her. There 
was in his face a look of relief, almost of exultation, 
and he shut his note-book with a slap and thrust it into 
his pocket. 

Lady Florence lifted a cold challenging face to his. 

“Well, Mr. Commissioner, how’s the report getting 
on?” she asked. 

John Blunt was no whit abashed. He came tumbling 
down the bank toward her like a great boy, friendship 
194 


A SOUL SPEAKS 


195 


and fellowship glowing on his face, as she had never seen 
it before. 

“Lady Brackenhurst,” he began genially. 

“Lady Florence ,” she corrected. 

He brought up short. 

“What?” 

“Lady Florence Brackenhurst,” with a tap of her foot. 

A puzzled, almost surly expression, stole over his face. 

“I don’t know what ye talkin’ about,” he growled. 
“But I was going to remark when you interrupted me 
that if there were more landlords like you there’d be fewer 
Socialists like me.” 

He held out his hand. 

She flashed her eyes into his, and saw in them nothing 
but sincerity, kindliness, even admiration. Then to her 
own amazement she took the hand he extended to her, 
and the frost and battle faded out of her face. 

For thirty years she had devoted her life to the care 
of her estate. It had been husband and children, brothers 
and sisters, to her who had no others. And all the noble 
capacity for love, the power, the passion, of this woman, 
made for motherhood and unmated, had been lavished 
upon the people who were her only children to be whipped 
when naughty, encouraged when good, made much of 
when invalid, and petted when old. And here was her 
mortal enemy, who represented all she loathed most, 
recognizing the worth of her life work, and blessing it. 

Little wonder that the colour came and went in her 
cheek, that she dropped her eyes, and stood before him 
like a girl abashed. 

“I do my best,” she muttered. 


196 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


He took his place beside her as they strolled along. 

“May I walk with you to your gates? ,, The touch 
of deference, of courtesy, almost of humility, so strange 
sounding in this great barbarian, completed her over- 
throw. 

“Of course you may,” she trembled. 

A truer woman’s heart never beat than in the breast 
of Florence Brackenhurst. Once touched home, the 
scales of class and convention which had grown about 
her native soul, encrusting it, fell from her like the 
cast skin of a snake, and she emerged, very simple, very 
sweet, a child, innocently trustful, loving herself, and 
desiring above all things to be loved. 

The colour dabbed her cheeks and she was breathing 
unevenly, her eyes shining, and bosom uncertain as she 
walked beside him. 

Frost-bound a minute back, now the thaw had set in 
with amazing swiftness; and she was breaking up like an 
ice-pack washed by a warm tide. 

Surreptitiously she dabbed her eyes and sniffed. 

They came to the great gates. 

He thrust out his hand. 

“Good-bye,” he said deeply. “I’m off on Monday. 
There’s nothing to do here.” 

She held the hand that till twenty minutes since she 
had on many an occasion deliberately and with flagrant 
offensiveness refused to take. 

“We’re going to have a little dancing in the play-room 
to-night after dinner,” she said shyly — “just two or three 
couples. You won’t come?” 

He shook his shaggy head. 


A SOUL SPEAKS 197 

“No clothes; no manners; no nuffin,” he said. “Thank 
you all the same. Good-bye. ,, 

“Won’t you come in?” she asked. 

“I’ll come a little way,” he said, awkward as she was 
shy. 

They strolled up the drive together, the woman who 
was holding the fort, and the man who was attacking it. 

On the lawn upon the left they caught a glimpse of 
two white figures playing tennis under trees. 

“ Run! ” came a man’s voice. “ Run , Lady Rachel ! ” 

“Wretch!” came a panting scream. “I can’t.” 

“ Poo ! you’re no good,” came the chaffing voice. “ You 
must run .” 

John Blunt paused and gazed. 

Then he turned to the woman at his side, and his 
eyes were strangely soft. 

“Is all well with the child?” he asked. 

Lady Florence was still extraordinarily moved. She 
had braced herself for battle, had girded on her breast- 
plate, and drawn her sword. And her enemy had passed 
through her armoury like a cloud, and ensconced himself 
quietly and securely in her heart. 

She blushed faintly and dropped her eyes. 

“I think they like each other very much,” she said 
gently. 

The great man strolled along beside her. 

“We old folk who’ve shot our bolt or missed our tide 
don’t want the younger people to do the same,” he mur- 
mured deeply, “eh?” 

The autumn lady began to thrill. For the first time 
she understood something of the fascination this man had 


198 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


for Rachel. He took her into the Great Country — how 
she did not know: she only knew that she was there. 

She found herself saying in quiet voice, 

“Have you shot your bolt?” 

All the miserable artificial barriers man builds against 
his brother, and as yet must build, had melted away. 
They were man and woman, soul and soul, children of 
the same Father, their origin and destiny the same, 
walking the troubled deeps of this world side by side. 

“No,” he answered as quietly; “I’ve missed my tide.” 

She glanced up at the gray, cathedral head solemn 
above her. 

“So’ve I,” she said, simple as a child. 

Quite suddenly she had stepped out of Time into 
Eternity. There all was Truth and Beauty. Her heart 
was speaking out of its own unfathomable deeps; and 
she was listening to it in mysterious awe. 

“I should like to see her a mother,” said the voice 
at her side, so near and yet so far away. 

A tide of love and of humility was flowing through 
her. She was walking on its waves in a dream of quiver- 
ing holiness, so pure, so high, and so unutterably truthful. 

“I know,” she trembled, and lifted a face tender as an 
April evening, and shining with the wistful light of hopes for- 
ever unfulfilled and forever unforgotten — “I miss mine so.” 

The autumn lady stole up the drive alone. 

A strange twilight beauty irradiated her. 

Suddenly and sweetly this withering plant had bloomed 
afresh after many years. The harsh spinster who 
rammed her way through the world by force of Will had 


A SOUL SPEAKS 


199 


faded in the ghost of the girl who should have been a 
mother a quarter of a century ago. 

Tides of beautiful emotion, delicate as mist, flowed 
through her being, sweetening her eyes, saddening her 
heart, flecking her cheek. The gleams and dreams of 
dawning womanhood rainbowed her once more, the rain- 
bow hallowed now by the wistful lights of evening. 

There was about the autumn lady a far-off fragrance, 
a suggestion of long-forgotten loveliness, as of some 
century-old pot-pourri stored away in a remote cabinet 
and there chanced upon by young eyes, stirred by 
young fingers, sniffed by young nostrils, generations after 
the gatherer had gone to sleep beneath a yew in some 
quiet green acre. 

Lady Florence was flooded with a thousand sweet un- 
conscious regrets for her missed motherhood and the 
stalwart sons and splendid daughters who should have 
accompanied and stayed her as she turned her face from 
the sun and gradually descended into the Valley of the 
Shadow. 

Under the lime tree on the lawn Lord Hilly ard slept 
beneath a handkerchief, his white waistcoast rising and 
falling. 

The autumn lady stood above the man who should 
have been her mate. 

“Bobo!” she murmured. “Bobo!” 

Whether it was her voice, or some wave of the emotion 
that thrilled the woman he loved, which passed to his 
sleeping spirit, the little man stirred, woke, and peeped 
up one-eyed from beneath his handkerchief. 

Still half asleep he saw through mists the girl who 


200 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


thirty years before had lifted him into the heaven from 
which he had never rightly descended since — saw her 
smiling down on him, dark-eyed and tender, her head 
set in the blue of heaven above him. 

The little fat man rose wifch a gasp and snatched the 
handkerchief from his head. 

“ Baba ! ” he gasped. “ My dear — my dearest dear ! ” 
He toddled to her like a little child and kissed her shoulder 
passionately. 

Her eyes became great and brimming, and the corners 
of her lips drooped and twitched. 

Tears flowed down the faces of both, the tears of two 
brave souls face to face with the destiny they have missed. 

“It’s all right, dear,” gasped the autumn lady. “It’s 
all right.” 

What she meant she did not know, neither did he; 
but each derived vague comfort from the simple words 
that came welling up from the deeps of her great ocean- 
heart. 


XXIX 


JOHN BLUNT ON CAESAREAN SOCIALISM 

John Blunt stood in the drive after Lady Flor en ce 
had left him and watched the two white figures leaping 
and laughing on the lawn under elms. 

The man was as agile and graceful as a panther, 
playing with the girl across the net with the teasing 
tenderness of a cat sporting with a mouse. 

Then the pair drew up to the net and disputed laugh- 
ingly, their racquets clashing. 

“George won’t play any more!” whimpered the man, 
as he picked up his coat, and flung it carelessly across 
his white shoulders. 

John Blunt watched the two stroll away shoulder to 
shoulder down the long green alley which he and she had 
often walked together — toward the same door in the 
same old red wall to pick plums off the same tree. 

The man was talking, swaggering gallantly along, 
brandishing his racquet, and every now and then flashing 
his big-beaked face at the drooping modest figure at his 
side; and it was clear that he was talking well. For the 
girl lifted her head, threw up her eager questioning face to 
her tall companion, and John Blunt heard her clear 

“Not really!” and then the bubble and toss of her 
laughter pouring forth in silvery torrents and mingling 
201 


202 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


with the other’s loud and hearty ha! ha! as she caught 
the flash of his hidden humour. 

The door in the wall closed upon the two white figures ; 
but he could still hear storms of laughter, rising suddenly, 
tp sink, and rise again, as he turned away with dark face. 

That noon he sat for long in his bare sitting room, 
his hands in his pockets, and eyes on the window. 

Out of doors the sun shone, and a bird sang. 

His door was ajar; and through the crack the dark 
woman, sweeping in the kitchen, caught his face. 

Something in the expression of it arrested her. 

Twice she stopped her sweeping to stare, and twice 
continued it, mumbling. 

The man was her enemy but the man was Man, and 
she was Woman; and the man was sad. He sat there 
like a great old owl, moulting and miserable. There was 
nothing of the Boy about him now. 

She banged with her broom to cheer him. 

The banging failed of its effect. 

He sat on silent, calling her, calling. 

In the stillness her heart of a woman heard him and 
replied. 

She went to the paper cupboard and withdrew Pip 
protesting from its crackling recesses. 

In the passage she set him down and shoved open the 
parlour door. 

The cat padded across to the sombre figure in the 
chair and leapt up. 

John Blunt took the great creature in his arms and 
began to fondle him and murmur. 

The woman resumed her sweeping. 


ON CAESAREAN SOCIALISM 


203 


That afternoon in his tiny sitting-room, with Pip upon 
his lap, John Blunt sat and wrote to the editor of the 
Morning Chronicle: 

Dear Hicks : 

I’ve kept putting you off and off, and now I’ve only news 
that’ll make you swear. 

I must give up this job and for the best of all reasons — be- 
cause there’s nothing to be made out of it. No man, as you 
know, is stronger against our present property and land system 
than myself. But given the system I don’t honestly believe 
it could be better worked than this woman works it. She has 
the three qualifications with which only it can be made to suc- 
ceed — the sound head, the big heart, and last but not least the 
long purse. The first two I suppose imply that sense of duty 
the lack of which is the grand defect of the platform imperialists 
of our day. 

Now this Brackenhurst woman has that sense strongly 
developed. 

She not only disciplines her crowd but she disciplines herself. 
She’s out every morning at eight, feeding her own chickens, 
and — she sticks it. It’s there where she gets the pull over the 
platform imperialists of our day. 

She sticks it. I don’t suppose she’s away for a fortnight 
throughout the year, and hasn’t been since her old nurse died 
with whom she used always to spend a month in the summer. 
She’s got the guts to stick it. Here her heart is and here’s 
her home. She lives on the place and for the place as a person 
in her position with any sense of imperial responsibility ought 
to do. From the time the first snows fall in October till the 
hills clear in May, here she is at her post, steady as a rock. 
There’s no chucking it with the first frost, and running away 
to the Riviera, or Egypt, or India, or Africa, or wherever duty 
doesn’t call, when the pinch comes. 


204 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


England expects every man to dodge his duty seems to be 
the motto of our platform imperialists. It isn’t this woman’s. 
She sticks it. Where the need is, there is she. When she dies 
I shall write her epitaph : 

Florence Brackenhurst : 

THE LAST ENGLISH ARISTOCRAT 
WHO STUCK IT. 

Of course she has the pull over most of them. Her social 
position is secure. She’s well-bred on both sides of her head. 
She hasn’t to struggle and push to get There : she was born There. 
She needn’t go to London and the fashionable watering-places 
in order to get on. Society has no attractions for her. It 
comes to her. She needn’t go to it. 

And if she’s a tyrant, as she undoubtedly is, she’s just the 
right sort of tyrant. They none of them love her. In fact 
the first thing that drew me to her was that I found there 
wasn’t a touch of slobber about her relations with her people. 
“She’s aw’ reet, ” was the most I could get from them about her. 
There was no worship of Our Lady, one eye winking and one 
on rabbits and blankets in this village. The dear old Squire 
and Lady Bountiful business which turns my stomach up was 
conspicuously absent. 

Even the old parson would only admit that his patroness 
was respected. And that’s just it: they all respect, and they 
all fear her. There’s no nonsense about her. I tell you what 
I’ve found on this estate: I’ve found what I’ve been searching 
for in England for the last quarter of a century — Discipline, 
strong, kind, and just. Discipline, Law, the thing we need as 
a nation; the thing for lack of which we are dropping behind 
disciplined Germany; the thing that has made a Socialist of 
me because I know that we shall never have it except under 
Socialism — the Caesarean Socialism which I am supposed 
to stand for. For I see that while the individual always 


ON CAESAREAN SOCIALISM 


205 


exercises authority (usually, to be just, unconsciously) in the 
interests of himself and of his class to the detriment of the 
community, the community must perforce exercise it in the in- 
terests of the community and to the advantage of the individual. 
In our day the individual as a disciplinarian is dead, and the 
community is hardly born. Just now we wabble in the trough 
of transition seas, and are liable to upset because of it. There- 
fore we meet to shove on unhasting and unresting toward 
the future, recognizing that we cannot recall the past even if 
we would. 

But to return to this woman. 

She runs her estate herself, and she runs it uncommon well. 
The cottages are warm, dry, and weather-proof; the sanitation 
primitive but excellent; the water supply abundant and of the 
best. There’s a reading-room she has built, and a recreation 
ground she lets them have at a nominal rent. The parish nurse 
system she runs herself on an admirable contributory basis 
which has spread through Cumberland. 

Her pension scheme is sound and again contributory: pity 
the Government didn’t come to her for a few hints. There 
isn’t a streak of this accursed thing, Sentimentality, about her. 
There was one drunkard about the place, but she had him out of 
it after she’d given him a fair chance. Immorality is most 
rare and mercilessly dropped on. She is Caesarean if she is 
not Socialist. Consequently the whole place is prosperous and 
happy. In fact, the woman is applying herself just that meas- 
ure of kind, stern, necessary discipline which in the days that 
are coming the State will apply to make of us a happy and 
prosperous people — if we don’t succumb to plutocracy and the 
drink trust first. 

Of course there is the inevitable other side to the picture. 
I was amazed and disgusted to find the men touched their 
hats to one and the women bobbed. While their manners 


206 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


are better, they are not near so independent as throughout the 
North generally. And the conditions in the outlying mining 
villages from which she draws the main of her wealth are not 
so good as here in Scar under her eye. There are two worlds: 
there is the mining world from which she draws her wealth 
and the agricultural world on which she spends it. 

I went over to Blackhaven the other day, a little mining town 
on the borders of her estate. Outside the gates of a colliery just 
above the harbour were huge piles of cinders and refuse of the 
coal. On this pile two old women in sackcloth aprons grubbed 
upon their hands and knees raking the cinders over for knobs 
of coal worth saving for their fires. These two old things looked 
seventy apiece. I daresay they weren’t much more than fifty. 
They crawled about on their hands and knees, their eyes a foot 
above the cinders, raking with their skinny claws. Close by 
them three grimy children, also on their hands and knees, 
searched the same alluvial for the same gold. 

The competition between the old women and the children 
was deadly. It was a struggle for life. Every now and then one 
of the old women lifted up her head and swore at the children, 
and the children swore back; and once a young woman in clogs 
clappered to the door of a dingy cottage hard by, and called to 
one of the children quite impersonally — ’“A’ll cut tha — nose 
off.” 

That’s the other and inevitable side of the picture. Where 
there is scum there will be dregs. 

But the fact remains. There’s no change to be got out of 
this place or this woman. She’s the right sort. As vulgar 
as you like, and quite uncultivated, but her heart’s in the right 
place. She never reads or thinks. She just acts — and usually 
aright. The plain, practical woman — as good at her job as 
a woman without ideas can be. The solid Anglo-Saxoness 
at her best. Of course she’s choc-a-bloc with prejudices which 


ON CAESAREAN SOCIALISM 


207 


she likes to call principles — her caste, her family, and the 
whole snobby bag o’ tricks. I don’t suppose she’s ever heard 
of Darwin. Certainly she’s sublimely ignorant that he killed 
“family” fifty years ago. 

Well, her day is done. And if there were more like her, I 
should be sorry for it. With many in her position who realized 
their duty and did it, there would be less urgent need than 
there is at present to have them out of it. The trouble is that 
this woman stands almost alone in her class. Her position is 
peculiar. She combines the two things: (1) the tradition, the 
sense of duty, the feudal spirit of the old; and (2) the money 
of the new. There aren’t many like that. The old families 
haven’t got the money; the new haven’t got the tradition. 
And where the old families have the money it came to them in 
nine cases out of ten by marriage with the new to the loss of 
all that was noblest in the original stock. 

There, now I feel better. 

I come South on Monday and shall look you up next week, 
bringing with me the MS. of Caesarean Socialism, which is 
now ready. 


J. B. 


XXX 


JOHN BLUNT SEES, UNSEEN 

That evening after supper John Blunt strolled out 
through the village. 

The river rustled pleasantly upon his right. 

Two village fishermen tramping by with long rods 
wished him good night. By the pool opposite the forge 
he heard the swish of a rod and plop of a worm falling 
in the water. 

He turned off across the water meadows, the woods 
of the Hall dark-bosomed on his left, and the river shin- 
ing on his right. 

It was warm and still, and he paused and listened to 
the noises of the night. Some curlews flew piping over- 
head, and once he heard the splash of an otter. 

Then from far a piano began to play a waltz. 

He struck off across the meadow, crossed the ha-ha 
and made his way under beeches, over wet lawns, toward 
the Hall. 

A long low room in the west wing was ablaze with 
light. He took up his position under a shrubbery 
opposite. Fifty yards of lawn separated him from the 
room. 

The windows were wide and he could see within. 
Lady Florence sat at the piano and played vehemently. 

208 


JOHN BLUNT SEES, UNSEEN 


209 


Two or three couples whirled within. He saw Rachel 
swirling round in the arms of a tall dark man, who 
swung her and swayed her as a helmsman swings his ship. 

John Blunt could see neither floor nor legs. His eyes 
were on the girl’s bare shoulders and the black arm wound 
about her waist. Her head seemed to rest on the tall 
man’s shoulder; and there was a dreamy peace about 
her face. The two were flowing over invisible seas, 
dipping to them, helmsman and ship, each answering 
the other’s lightest impulse, for ever one and indivisible. 

A hand clutched John Blunt’s heart and wrung it. 
He drew his breath as one in pain; and out of the night 
answering him came the death shriek of a rabbit caught 
by a stoat. 

He turned and glowered into the darkness behind him. 

There, and indeed everywhere beneath the night, the 
Master Blacksmith was hammering, hammering upon 
His anvil; testing and rejecting; selecting the few through 
whom He would renew His tremendous life, and scrapping 
the remainder to throw them into the furnace afresh, 
and remould them nearer to His heart’s desire; Love and 
War His two eternal instruments; Love, the bellows 
with which He blew the heart white-hot, and War the 
hammer, with which He tried its temper on the block. 

Love and War! Man warring against man for Woman 
that he may make her the Mother of God. 

The music ceased. The two who had seemed for 
ever one broke suddenly apart. 

The tall dark man began to laugh; and the girl clapped 
her hands and cried, 

“Splendid, Cousin Florence.” 


210 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

Then she came into the veranda and gazed out into 
the night. 

John Blunt stood in the blackness of the shrubbery 
and watched her. 

The girl lifted her dress and made as though to come 
to him. 

In the darkness he held out silent arms toward her. 

She seemed to answer his mute appeal. 

Lifting her dress, she came toward him delicately, 
her eyes on her feet. 

His heart thumped, and his face was lifted and beauti- 
ful in the darkness. 

There was no simpler fellow beneath the stars than 
John Blunt. 

If she would come, he thought, if she would come to 
him in the darkness, unknowing he was there, if she would 
come 

But she turned. 

“Get my ten toes wet,” he heard her murmur to her- 
self, and she retreated to the path and took her seat on 
a garden-chair in the shadow of the house. 

His arms dropped. 

The piano struck up. 

“Rachel!” came the voice of Lady Florence. 

The girl did not stir. She sat where she was in the 
shadow. John Blunt could see the dim white of her 
dress moth-like in the darkness. 

“Where’s the child got to?” called Lady Florence. 

The tall man’s head and shoulders appeared at the 
window. 

“Lady Rachel!” he called, and his deliberate leisurely 


JOHN BLUNT SEES, UNSEEN 


211 


voice, smooth though it was, jarred the man in the 
darkness opposite so that he grunted. 

A white waistcoat strolled in to the veranda. 

Lord Hillyard stepped on to the path and gazed into 
the darkness at the girl. 

She held out a dim arm toward him, beckoning silently. 
The fat little peer went toward her, the end of his cigar 
glowing in the night, and took the hand held out to him. 

“D’you see her, Lord Hillyard?” called the man at 
the window, in his exasperatingly urbane voice. 

“I think she has gone to her room for a handkah- 
chief,” came the little man’s round voice from the dark- 
ness, as he lifted the girl’s hand to his lips. 

John Blunt strolled home with surging heart. 


XXXI 


JOHN BLUNT WAVERS 

Next morning was Sunday. 

Hannah Fell leaned over the little fence that separated 
her potato patch from the field behind the cottage, and 
called in mother-murmuring accents. 

Pip, who was born for the town and the tiles, had been 
out all night. 

John Blunt, drawn by the cooing tenderness in the 
woman’s voice, came out of the cottage and strolled up 
the rough path, his eyes on the woman’s broad back. 

“Pip! Pip! ma li’l sweetheart!” cooed the woman. 

“He’s been caught in a trap, I expect,” said John 
Blunt, comfortably. 

The dark woman rolled her eyes up at him. 

“It’s none the birds he’s after,” she muttered, un- 
moved. “It’s the white kitties. He’s thy mak’ o’ 
man’s, ma Pip.” 

John Blunt turned with a grunt and strolled back to 
the cottage. 

There he sat down and after some marching delibera- 
tion, wrote his Sunday letter. 

Dear little Mother: 

I am for the first time in my life in two minds. Never in my 
life before have I felt such a miserable shilly-shallying weakling. 

212 


JOHN BLUNT WAVERS 


213 


To go or not to go? To do or not to do? 

That is the question. 

Having lived round a woman all these years, and such a 
woman! — I kiss her little finger, no one being by to see — I 
find I need one now. 

I didn’t know it — till I found the woman. 

She first made me aware of my own lack. 

In fact I do not now need a woman in my life: what I need 
is THE WOMAN — this woman, who has come to me out of 
the night. 

She has created the need she only can fulfil. And I can 
hardly doubt that, given the chance, she would refuse to fill 
it. And I should be the last to blame her. 

What chance have I, an old man, although he is still your 
little boy, 

Jacko. 

All the chance in the world you will reply. 

But then you are my mother mine. 

He went out and stood in the door of the cottage, 
gloomy-browed. 

A merry wind rushed from the sea, and the clouds 
tumbled across the blue. 

A closed brougham drove by on the way to church. 

He saw a white waistcoat shining within, and Lady 
Florence leaned out and called to him friendly : 

“ Come up and see us before you g o.” 

A few minutes later Dalbignac and Rachel walked by. 

The Major wore a green hat with a feather in it. It 
was set jauntily on the back of his head and the sun 
shone on his white forehead and keen, big-beaked face. 
He wore a suit of a peculiar lobelia blue, and his trousers, 


214 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


turned up, showed green socks, red-clocked. Nobody 
but George Dalbignac could have carried off his clothes; 
but he looked by no means amiss in them, flaunting by 
with the easy devil-may-care gallantry peculiar to him, 
throwing his handsome head from side to side, and 
humming to himself. 

“Swaggering ass,” muttered John Blunt under his 
breath. 

The Guardsman looked up. 

The eyes of the smooth man and the shaggy met. 

The soldier stopped his humming. 

Rachel too saw the savage in the door, and weaved to 
him. 

“Hullo!” she cried in her chuckling voice. “We’re 
quite strangers.” 

She did not stop, but swished rapidly by in rustling 
skirt, one gloved hand to her hat, and the wind wrapping 
her slim young figure about in clouds of flying raiment. 

“Is that the great J. B.P” asked the soldier sotto voce. 

“That’s Mr. Blunt,” replied the girl, her head down, 
as she tugged against the wind. 

The soldier shot a glance at her out of the corner of 
his eyes, and resumed his humming. 

John Blunt retired to his own room, sat down dark- 
faced, and wrote determinedly: 

Dear Martha: 

I come South to-morrow and shall be with you about seven 
p. m. 

If you can’t put me up, get me a room out. I will settle your 


JOHN BLUNT WAVERS 215 

dispute with your sister as soon as I come. You seem to me to 
be entirely in the wrong as usual. 

Meantime the best plan to prevent further trouble is either 
for you to keep Abraham in a room apart from your sister’s 
canary, or for her to hang up the canary where Abraham can’t 
get at it. 

Yours affectionately, 
John Blunt. 

He marched into the kitchen and told the dark woman 
rocking there that he should not be back for lunch: then 
he went out and turned his face to the sea and the sand- 
hills. 

As he passed the church the sound of a mechanical 
voice came undulating wearily to him. 

He paused and seemed to struggle with himself. 

Then he turned in through, the lych-gate, marching 
deliberately as one who is drawn against his will, and 
peeped through the porch. 

The man in the box was clearly running down. 

His jolly red face had assumed that stiff and unnatural 
melancholy which those affect who take their stand on 
high week after week to preach the Good News to men. 

John Blunt thought Mr. Lloyd’s countenance was like 
an October apple playing it was a dried fig. And every 
moment he expected the apple to forget its part and begin 
to chuckle. 

Now indeed the veil of melancholy which for these 
occasions only hung over that sinful and wicked world 
which the jolly old fellow enjoyed so innocently except 
in his professional moments began to lift; and behind 
the veil there was a glimmer of hope and faith; for 


216 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


the preacher was nearing his sermon’s end, and no one 
was more devoutly thankful than himself. 

John Blunt looked over the heads of the sitting congre- 
gation to the front pew. 

There he saw a mist of forget-me-nots floating and 
beside it a man with a keen dark face, his scalp gleaming 
through fine hair. 

Again that hand clutched his heart. 

What chance had he? 

Half an hour later he was striking across the sand hills 
among bucketing rabbits and screaming sea gulls, the 
rush grass pricking him through his stockings. There 
was no laughter in his eyes to-day. 

He walked with the shadow on his face, and the hollow 
in his heart. 

Once he paused on the crest whence he had seen the 
boy bathing, then made for Majuba outstanding on the 
shore. 

At the foot of the fortress hill he stayed, his eyes on 
the summit shaggy against the sky. 

He walked about its base, staring. The sand drift 
had covered his foot-marks and those of the girl’s. 

The smooth brown sides, roughening toward the top, 
showed no vestige of man or animal. 

Thus and thus that little hill must have stood enduring 
alone, always enduring, in the sound of the tide and 
under the mute sky for aeons. 

John Blunt saluted it solemnly. 

Then laboriously he ploughed his way to the top and 
stood there, the wind in his hair. 


JOHN BLUNT WAVERS 


217 


He saw the Isle of Man a shadow across the sea, and 
northward the long faint line of Scotland, where the men 
came from for the women. He turned about and gazed 
at the estuary shining in the sun, and the misty-shimmer- 
ing hills. 

Then he went down on his hands and knees and seemed 
to sniff amid the tufts of rush grass. In the sand he 
found a tiny dent as of a heel, and plunged his lips into 
it and plunged as a pilgrim worshipping the foot-marks 
of a saint. 

Here and here and here her bare feet had trod, shining 
opal pink in the green of the grass; here she had sat; 
here she had laughed. 

A sea gull floating by above saw the crouching figure, 
grey-breeched beneath the sky, its head bobbing and 
burrowing, and hands spread wide upon the sand. 

John Blunt, alone on his sand hill, the nearest man 
miles away, lifted his head. His moustache and beard 
were covered with sand; his face was dark; his eyes 
wrought with pain. 

Then he squatted back upon his heels; his eyelids 
slowly rising and falling. 

What chance had he? 

A scrap of paper, yellow-lined, lay beside his fingers, 
half-buried in the sand. He recognized it for the cover- 
ing of the chocolate he and she had eaten together up 
there, and snatched it greedily. 

With infinite delicacy he blew the sand off it, folded 
it with care, and placed it in his pocket. 

Then he rose with a grunt of satisfaction, and the 
storm of suffering in his face drifted away. 


218 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


Tumbling down the sand hill he made for the gullery 
to search for a baby gull. 

On his way his eye caught a wild pansy, yellow-bearded 
at his feet. Dropping upon his knees the great fellow 
kissed it with beautiful tenderness. 

On reaching the cottage he found the door locked and 
the woman out. 

He glanced at his watch. 

It was half-past four. 

A remote drumming came to his ears across the valley. 

It was the gong at the Hall sounding for tea. 

He listened to it, his head down. 

In the road children were trooping by on their way 
from Sunday-school, talking over their lesson. 

One of them said, 

“Faint-hearted! — that’s what Peter were.” 

In the stillness a robin sounded a bold single note and 
was silent. 

John Blunt took the road determinedly; and the 
sweat was on his brow. 


XXXII 


THE SPIRIT OF RESISTANCE FLAPS ITS WINGS 

The party at the Hall were having tea on the terrace 
when he came striding doggedly toward them across the 
lawn. 

Rachel rose to meet him with glad eyes. 

“It’s clear who hasn’t been to church to-day,” said 
Lord Hillyard from the most comfortable chair. 

“Oh, you can’t tell by his clothes,” chaffed Lady 
Florence, her eyes kind on her new guest. “These are 
the clothes he does go to church in when he does go.” 

“Perhaps Mr. Blunt has been too busy with his report 
upon you for the Morning Chronicle to go to church. 
Lady Florence,” interposed Dalbignac blandly. 

There was a silence. Rachel’s face darkened. Lady 
Florence looked stern disapproval at the offender, who 
stirred his tea urbanely and refused to catch her eye. 

There were few subjects on which Lady Florence had 
not views and violent ones. But there was this of the 
great lady about her, that, at her own table, unless 
roused, she put the partizan resolutely aside and ruled 
queenly, administering indifferent justice, mindful of 
her duty to all, and compelling respect for opinions how- 
ever opposed to her own, so long as the courtesies of 
debate were not infringed. 


219 


220 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


John Blunt dropped into a chair and eyed the Guards- 
man opposite with grim and gloomy savagery. 

The Spirit of Resistance had claimed him for its own. 

“ Sugar?” said Lady Florence, brandishing the sugar- 
tongs. 

He thrust out a silent hand for his cup. 

The soldier smiled surreptitiously and sniffed. 

John Blunt saw and heard. 

“I’m admiring Dalbignac’s hat,” he said, his voice 
rolling out deep, thunderous, and smothered as from a 
bottomless abyss. “It’s just like one my governess used 
to wear when I was a kid.” 

The Major showed white teeth. 

“I wasn’t educated by a governess myself,” he said. 
“I was educated at Eton.” 

A sardonic smile played about the other’s shaggy face. 

“Ah,” he said, “I thought he’d be telling us he’d been 
at Eton before he was much older.” 

The Guardsman stared blankly. Then he shrugged 
and stirred his tea. Lord Hillyard pursed his mouth and 
looked away. Lady Florence became cold and very 
grim. 

Those who were not in the clutches of the Spirit of 
Resistance felt the shadow of its wings. 

Dalbignac turned to Rachel and began to talk easily, 
the girl somewhat restless. 

John Blunt sitting back in his chair his head between 
his hunched shoulders, watched them, growling in the 
spirit. 

“What train are you going by to-morrow?” asked 
Lady Florence almost brutally. 


THE SPIRIT OF RESISTANCE 


221 


“I don’t know that I’m going at all.” 

Dalbignac glanced round. 

“Mr. Blunt perhaps has more material to collect for 
his report upon you,” he said, and seemed to pick his 
words, like a lawyer, to make them tell offensively. 

Lady Florence flashed her eyes at him. Unheeding, 
he resumed his talk with Rachel. The girl listened, 
coldly now, and all the light had gone from her face. 
Dalbignac talked on carelessly, discussing the deplor- 
able Socialistic tendency of a certain section of the 
Church. 

John Blunt watched him as a cat watches a mouse, 
and pounced suddenly. 

“I don’t agree,” he interposed suddenly. 

The other ignored him and talked on. 

His deliberate insolence offended Rachel, who turned 
to John Blunt. 

“What d’you think?” she asked, rather white. 

“I don’t agree,” muttered John Blunt between his 
teeth. 

It seemed he was a volcano on the verge of an eruption. 

The Major stirred his tea. 

“I think it’s more than probable that Mr. Blunt’s 
religious views and ours would differ,” he said with the 
courteous insolence peculiar to the worst kind of his 
class. 

“I daresay,” replied John Blunt, as calm now as his 
opponent and as insolent. “I don’t take my religious 
views from my tailor.” 

Lady Florence flashed from one man to the other. 

The Major dropped his eyes and sniffed. There was 


222 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

a prim look on his face, and he hitched his shoulders 
slightly. 

“I don’t know that any of us do,” he said quietly. 
“I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Churchman 
myself.” 

There was more than a touch of self-righteousness in 
his words and his way of saying them. It was clear that 
he thought himself very much in the right. 

“Well. It’s easier than being a Christian,” replied 
the other, very still. 

Lady Florence, a strong Churchwoman in her own 
way, took him up sharply. 

“I don’t know what ye mean,” she snapped. “Ex- 
plain yourself.” 

John Blunt was doggedly silent. 

The soldier waited on him deliberately, feeling that 
the victory was his. 

“Mr. Blunt’s religious views, if he has religious views, 
would hardly agree with ours, Lady Florence,” said the 
soldier at last, suave and stirring. “Mr. Blunt is the 
author, I believe, of the phrase — Man made God in his 
own image. Mr. Blunt will correct me if I am in error.” 

John Blunt was seething in his chair; but he answered 
with deadly calm. 

“I’m the author of the phrase — Scratch the aristo- 
crat and you find the bounder .” 

The Guardsman laughed. 

“Are we not courteous?” he tittered. “D’you hear 
the compliments he’s showering on you, Lady Rachel?” 

John Blunt shot forward, his eyes blazing. 

“Don’t talk at me!” he thundered. 


THE SPIRIT OF RESISTANCE 


223 


Lady Florence leapt to her feet. 

“I think you both want smacking!” she shrilled. 
“Men of your age!” 

“Heah! heah!” said Lord Hillyard from his comfort- 
able chair. “That’s the first sensible contribution to 
this school-boy’s wrangle I’ve heard.” He rose in his 
white waistcoat, offered his arm to Rachel, and paddled 
pompously away. 

The girl was trembling, and her eyes were down. 

Lord Hillyard pressed her arm. 

They walked the lawn together, the fat little man 
and slim girl in white, like a brussels sprout and a lily 
courting. 

“Rachel, my dear,” said the little lord, when they 
were out of ear-shot, “your Bear wants some more off 
his claws.” 

The girl, hanging on her uncle’s arm, smiled through 
her tears. 

“He does; and he shall get it too.” She nodded reso- 
lutely: then lifted her face a little pleadingly. “But it 
wasn’t quite all Bear’s fault. Not quite” she urged. 
“Most; but not quite all.” 

Lord Hillyard pursed his lips and frowned solemnly 
like a child about to deliver judgment. 

“Bear was baited,” he said. “Bear was baited by 
Man, who should have known better. And when Bear 
is baited we mustn’t wonder if he strikes out. Besides, we 
mustn’t expect too much of poor old Bear at first. Bear 
is only beginning. He’s got everything to learn. Some 
day he’ll be like Man — only better, perhaps.” 

The girl hugged her uncle’s arm and gave a little skip. 


224 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


Twenty minutes later John Blunt trudging morosely 
down the rose alley came on her suddenly. 

Her back was to him, her face averted. She stood tall 
and white and slim, her dark head bowed, brooding over 
a crimson rose. 

He halted beside her. She did not turn or seem aware 
of his presence. 

“Good-bye,” he said gloomily. “I suppose you won’t 
shake hands.” 

She stretched her hand behind her. 

He took and held it. 

“I know I’ve done wrong,” he said hoarsely. “Good- 
bye. I’m off to-morrow.” 

“Ours” murmured the girl, her free hand fondling the 
rose. “ Monsieur Ours” 

“I know,” he growled, and his voice shook. “You 
won’t — let me see your face before I go?” 

She turned swiftly. The evening sun was in her eyes, 
and they were cold. 

“You’re not to go to-morrow,” she said. “I won’t 
have it. I’ve got to shorten your toes some more yet.” 

A great gladness broke out in a blaze over his face. 

“All right,” he trembled. “I’ll stay to be shortened.” 

He turned and re-turned. 

“Forgiven?” he asked, sheepish and ashamed. 

She had turned her back and was brooding over her 
rose again. 

He stood for a moment in her fragrance, inhaling it, 
then swung on his way. 

As he went, she flashed up tender, teasing eyes. 

Something about the hang of his shoulders and the plod 


THE SPIRIT OF RESISTANCE 


225 


of his great feet made the little laughing wrinkles gather 
about her nostrils. 

At the gate he turned. 

She was leaning toward him like a wind-driven flower, 
her face tilting up to his, mocking him tenderly. 

“Little Teddy Bear!” she chuckled. 

As she returned toward the house, she met her cousin. 

The battle-light still flickered in Lady Florence’s face. 

The eyes of the two women met and engaged. There 
was lightning and baffled laughter in them both. 

The autumn lady took the girl’s arm. 

“Oh, I did give those men something when you were 
gone!” she said between her teeth. “Did you ever ? 
Before you and me too. As to Dalbignac!” Her indig- 
nation spent itself in silence. 

“Bear was sorry,” cooed the girl. “He almost cried, 
and made no excuses. Nice Bear.” 

“Sorry!” snorted the other. “I should think he was. 
He went home with a sore head. And Dalbignac’s sulk- 
ing in the smoking-room. Men ! ” She snapped her teeth. 
‘I made them both apologize to me and to each other. 
Such manners!” 


XXXIII 


JOHN BLUNT PAUSES 

John Blunt sat up in his attic late into the night. 

His hands were in his pockets, his eyes on his knees; 
and only his eyelids moved. 

His candle spluttered out and he was left in darkness. 

One by one the voices in the road beneath died 
away. 

One by one the lights in farm and cottages sprinkling 
the night went out. 

Still he sat on at the open window, his chin upon his 
chest and eyes slow-blinking. 

The lightship off Dark Coombe winked at him, and he 
was unaware of it. The clear face of the night became 
first ruffled and then dingy and he did not know it. 
Curlews piped overhead and he did not hear them. 

When at last he struck a match and looked at his 
watch, it was two o’clock. 

Bending over his mother’s photograph, he said, 

“Well, dear little soul, what d’you think about it?” 

Then taking off his clothes he turned into bed. 

Next day he did no work. 

Going down into the village after breakfast, he sent a 
wire to Martha, and turned into old Tom’s stable. 

226 


JOHN BLUNT PAUSES 227 

No great ghost lifted a tombstone head in the dusk as 
he entered. The old horse’s stall was empty. 

Walking on toward the bridge, John Blunt saw his 
old white friend grazing in the field by the river. 

Dropping down the steps that jutted out of the wall, 
he joined him. 

“You’re taking a day off too, old man,” he said; and 
not disturbing the other, disposed himself upon a bank 
hard by underneath an ash. 

The old horse lifted his tombstone head an inch 
or two and gazed with mild blue eye at the man 
sprawling beneath the tree. Then he resumed his 
munching. 

There were black patches on his white hide, where 
the harness had rubbed him, and his back rose a little 
in a bony ridge at the spine. He was weather-worn, 
strong, and enduring as the hills. Peacefully and patiently 
he grazed, his long, hollow neck lowered, one thick fore 
leg crooked, and the pendulous, pink-lined lips nibbling. 

Hours passed. 

John Blunt lay in the sound of munching with his 
hands behind his head and his eyes open. His mind was 
a lake and ever and anon a girl’s face rose to the surface 
of it and floated there, amid the great dreams, rich and 
red and flag-like. 

The old horse circled slowly round him as though 
tethered to him by a rope, munch-munch-munching. 

Each took deep comfort in the other’s presence, and 
felt the strength, solace, and satisfaction of that mute 
companionship. 

Tom wa? Nature: John Blunt was Man. Each had a 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


message for the other, and each could give it, for neither 
was conscious of his mission. 

“You’re good, old man,” muttered John Blunt. “I 
wish I was. Cos you’re good, so you’re happy.” 

A young pony, rusty black, his coat thick as a bear’s, 
and muddy with much rolling, came and joined them, 
in part jealous, in part inquisitive, poking a dormouse 
nose into the waistcoat of the man upon the green. 

The three passed the day quietly together almost with- 
out words. 

Toward evening John Blunt rose and strolled across 
the railway bridge to visit James Rigg. 

The old man who ended in himself sat always as lonely 
as an albatross in his neat-tiled parlour among his horse- 
hair chairs and the photographs of other men’s children. 
His mittened hands in his lap, and old eyes staring at 
the floor; an air of desolation and the vanity of all things 
shrouded him. 

On the wall was the picture of a favourite pointer, 
dead half a century, and in an album photographs of the 
children of the boys and girls who had played horses 
with him here in his own remote childhood. 

Fifty years back he had wished to marry, but his 
mother with the more than Castilian pride of a Cumber- 
land statesman’s wife had thought no girl good enough 
for her boy. 

She had not lived to see that boy sitting alone among 
his horse-hair chairs and the photographs of other men’s 
children; the fowls pecking in the parlour at his feet, and 
one rough peasant woman to hand him down into the grave. 


JOHN BLUNT PAUSES 


229 


The old man never smoked and never opened any of 
the ornamental books in the cabinet in the corner. He 
sat and waited; waited eternally to fulfil himself; blindly 
unaware that his waiting was for him fulfilment. 

Interests he had almost none, and friends very few: 
an occasional day with the otter hounds, an occasional 
visit from the old parson, the station master, and one 
or two of his few surviving brother statesmen, constituted 
his recreation. 

Too old to till his heritage, his land had long been let 
to a stranger. And the great nephew who was to have 
been his heir had recently been drowned at sea. 

To-night he showed his visitor the dead boy’s photo- 
graph in an album, and a prize the lad had won*at school. 

It was clear that he was prouder of the lad’s success 
than grieved at his death. The latter indeed he talked 
about, but it did not trouble him: for he hardly under- 
stood, hardly believed in it. 

Death was a word for him, Life a dim reality. An4 
what the lad had done in life was stamped indelibly upon 
his receding mind while the fact that the boy was al- 
leged to live no longer made no impression upon him. 

When John Blunt rose to go the great old bird-man 
with his huge beak, parrot voice, and mittened claws, 
showed him to the door, courteous as a king in spite of 
his eighty odd years. 

John Blunt plodded sombrely away in the evening 
down the lane, and at the corner turned. 

The old man who ended in himself was standing in 
his door amid pecking fowls gazing with dull eyes up into 
the unfathomable waste of sky. 


XXXIV 


JOHN BLUNT MAKES UP HIS MIND 

Next morning when he reached the bridge Rachel 
was leaning over the parapet, a handful of sweet peas in 
her belt. 

She came to him, stepping shyly as a fawn, the early 
morning warmth in her cheek. 

“I came round to you last night,” she said. “Did 
she tell you?” 

“No.” 

A breath of colour was coming and going in her face. 

Her eyes were on the sweet peas in her belt, and her 
eyelids fluttered. 

“I wanted to know,” she trembled. “It seems great 
cheek. Only it’s important.” She lifted eyes that were 
sweet and shy and wistful — “About that report!” 

He handed her an envelope stamped Morning Chronicle. 

“I was on my way with this now,” he said. 

She took it with expectant eyes. 

“May I?” 

He nodded. 

The envelope contained a letter from the editor of 
the Morning Chronicle and a printed slip that ran: 

Owing to a recent bereavement, Mr. John Blunt is unable 
to act as our Special Commissioner for West Cumberland. 

230 


JOHN BLUNT MAKES UP HIS MIND 231 


The girl’s face gleamed. 

“Oh!” she said. “This is just what I wanted. May 
I show this to Cousin Florence?” 

“Certainly,” replied the other. “I was just bringing 
it up to her.” He put his finger under the words owing 
to a recent bereavement. “That of course is a lie — an 
utter lie.” 

There was joy in the girl’s eyes as she seized her cousin 
after breakfast. 

“Look what I’ve got for you. Cousin Florence!” she 
whispered eagerly. 

The autumn lady read the slip and nodded approvingly, 
her lips tight. 

“I knew he was straight,” she said, “your Bear.” 

She tilted the girl’s chin. Her eyes dwelt on the 
face blooming and blowing so close to her own. “I’ll 
tell you what we’ll do, my lady.” There was a sparkle 
of wickedness in her eyes. “We’ll ask him to join us on 
Thursday for our picnic to Blackwater.” 

The girl hugged her. 

“Oh, Cousin Angle!” she cried. 

“I shall take Uncle Hilary in the carriage. And 
you shall have your two creatures — eh? They’ve made 
it up. I made them shake hands. It’ll be good for them.” 

Her eyes sparkled again. 

In her heart of hearts, Lady Florence, a sportswoman 
to the core, something of a pagan, loving a fight for its 
own sake, and by no means averse to bloodshed, enjoyed 
the battle between these two great males over the lovely 
creature at her side. 


232 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“D’you think you can hold them?” 

The girl snorted and danced. 

“Hold them!” she cried. “They’re only two rude 
little boys. I will whip them, and whip them, if they 
aren’t good.” 

“You weren’t very successful on Sunday, my lady,” 
said the other mischievously. “The team kicked over 
the traces a bit.” 

“Ah,” retorted the girl, ruffling lightly, “but somebody 
else was handling the ribbons.” 

“We know you think you’re a fine whip, Rachel,” 
laughed the autumn lady, patting her hair, and piqued 
in turn. “When you’re on the box yourself we shall 
see what we shall see.” 

She went downstairs to the smoking room. 

In the most comfortable chair two long legs that were 
not Lord Hilly ard’s appeared from beneath a paper that 
was not the Times. 

“Hullo, who takes in the Morning Chronicle ?” she 
chaffed. 

“That you, Lady Florence?” called a calm voice from 
behind the paper. “Yes, I like to see the other side. 
Now what d’you think of this gem?” 

The Lords have so mutilated the Urban Planning Bill as to 
destroy its practical utility. The leader of the attack was 
the now notorious Earl of Southwater who urged that the 
provisions requiring owners to put their houses into a state fit 
for human habitation should be excluded from repairing leases. 
Our readers need hardly be reminded that the noble Earl is 
himself one of the biggest of London’s landlords; and it throws 
an interesting light upon the conceptions of his class as to the du- 


JOHN BLUNT MAKES UP HIS MIND 233 


ties of an imperialist and a patriot to find that the London County 
Council has just ordered the closing of a block of houses be- 
longing to the Earl on account of their filthy sanitary con- 
dition. The Earl, who is this year President of the Royal 
Sanitary Society, in moving the rejection of the bill, summed 
up his views to his fellow-peers thus: The 'provision of houses 
is not an urgent matter, and it is much more important that owners 
should he safely guarded in the possession of their property. 

J. B. 

He dropped the paper and looked at her over it. 

“What price the Unspeakable!” 

She met him with grim amused eyes. 

“How you do hate him!” she said. 

He took up his paper again. 

“ What ! No, I don’t,” he said from behind it. “ What 
I say is — Let a man have what opinions he likes; but 
I do say let him be straight about them. To come up 
here as your guest and find out what he can in a sneaking 
sort of way and then incorporate it all in a report black- 
guarding you to blazes — it doesn’t seem to me the game. 
That’s all I say.” 

He tossed one long leg over the other. 

“He’s not incorporated it all in a report as yet,” re- 
plied Lady Florence. “And what’s more he won’t.” 

“Oh, won’t he?” sneered the voice from behind the 
paper. “Catch Master J. B. missing a chance of having 
a smack at the landed folk.” 

Smiling to herself, Lady Florence went out into the 
garden to find Lord Hillyard uncomfortably ensconced 
upon a wooden seat. 

“Has he been ousted of his pet chair then?” mocked 
the lady. “Was he turned out of the smoking room?” 


234 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


Lord Hillyard sucked his cigar and read his Times 
rather glumly. 

“Dalbignac’s there, I fancy,” he said. “I came out 
here.” 

The other looked down at him curiously. 

“Don’t you like Major Dalbignac?” she asked. 

Lord Hillyard’s chin was on his ruffled waistcoat. 
He looked down his nose. 

“Oh, he chatters away,” he said. “I see Blunt has 
resigned that job.” 

“Is that in the Times ?” sharply. 

“No. I saw it in Dalbignac’s Morning Chronicle .” 

The lady turned slowly away and slowly turned again, 
and her eyes were very thoughtful. 

The Major had not told her that! 

“Bobo, d’you think George Dalbignac’s straight?” 
she asked. 

Lord Hillyard puffed. 

“He’s the same as most, I suppose,” he replied evasively . 
“Some straight, some crooked, and most in between.” 

Lady Florence strolled down to the village, Mac 
padding behind her. 

By the forge she met John Blunt, starting off for a 
tramp. 

For once his eyes were timid as they met hers, and he 
was passing by on the other side of the road. 

“Won’t you shake hands?” she asked with the frank 
friendliness that so well became her. 

He came to her awkwardly and blushed. John Blunt 
blushed. 


JOHN BLUNT MAKES UP HIS MIND 235 


Her eyes rested on the shaggy, sun-browned face and 
slow blinking eyelids. 

“We want to know if you’ll come and picnic with us 
on Thursday,” she said. “We’re going to Blackwater. 
Lord Hillyard and I shall drive. Rachel and Major 
Dalbignac, if he’s here, will bicycle. We thought you 
could hire a bicycle and might care to come.” 

The man’s eyes leapt at her like lightning. 

“By Gad, I will!” he shouted. 

She froze, flashing her needles. 

The enthusiasm died out of his face. 

He stood before her, dull and dark. 

“I know,” he said. 

She thawed. 

“All right,” she said quietly. 

He walked back with her to her gates, but would not 
enter. 

She smiled at him through the bars and strolled away 
under the beeches, knitting, Mac swaggering along at her 
heels. 

“He’s becoming quite tame,” she confided to Rachel 
after luncheon. “He does you credit.” 

The girl smiled and made her fingers claws. 

“My leedle woolly b’ar,” she drolled. “I feed him on 
nice green cabbage with the dew on it instead of raw 
meat; and that makes a Christian of leedle woolly b’ar.” 

That afternoon John Blunt climbed Warton Fell 
amid dying heather and bracken that began to rust. 

On the knobby summit he looked seaward. 

Across the lowlands rose the low and jagged line of the 


236 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

sand-hills, and at the end of them flat-topped Majuba, 
fortress-like. 

Long he gazed, then drew a deep breath, and flung his 
fist into the blue. 

“I will!” he shouted and a sheep below lifted its head 
and stared. 


BOOK V 


THE CLASH OF MALES 



XXXV 


TWO MEN AND A WOMAN 

Thursday came, fair and fresh. 

John Blunt rode up the drive under the beeches on a 
rackety old bicycle, and his face was rapt and resolute. 

Before the gray arched entrance of the Hall a carriage 
already stood. Lord Hilly ard was sitting in it, plump 
and spry and white- waistcoated. 

The little lord’s eyes twinkled friendly as the shaggy 
gray man dismounted. 

“Ah, Blunt,” he said, thrusting a podgy hand toward 
the other. 

John Blunt’s eyes softened. He gave an awkward 
hitch to the tumble-down sombrero that he wore, and 
grunted good morning. 

Lady Florence climbed into the carriage. 

“Hilary, here’s your coat. You’re not to put it on 
till I tell you. And I’m taking a rug to wrap your little 
legs in on the way home. Is that you, Mr. Blunt? 
Rachel’s looking for you. We shall go on, because Job 
and Jerry don’t hurry their old stumps, and it’s up and 
down all the way.” 

The carriage crunched away, two top-hats and claret- 
coloured backs, silver-buttoned, towering above it, a 
black hat and a gray felt one side by side within it, 
239 


240 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

and eight brown legs with shining shoes clappeting 
underneath. 

John Blunt leaned his bicycle against the wall and 
went up the steps. 

Rachel stood in the dusk of the porch. 

She was wearing a simple white blouse with a broad limp 
collar that made her look more boy dike than ever. Two 
dark curls ran riot as always on her forehead; and her 
brown eyes laughed, as she saw him. 

“Good little Bear,” she chuckled, “wearing a hat so 
good and proper because he’s coming into Society. 
Oh, isn’t it a glorious morning? It makes the heart leap 
and the eyes glad.” 

She stood in the porch, the sun upon her. 

“Here’s Major Dalbignac with my bike.” 

The tall soldier came round from the stable wheeling 
two bicycles shining and beautiful as himself. He was 
in a long-waisted Norfolk jacket, fresh as a thorn in May, 
and fitting him with loose perfection. His athletic 
throat was girt with a flannel collar neatly fastened with 
a plain gold pin. Nothing could have been more simple 
or more consummate. He could with equal ease and 
fitness have entered a fashionable drawing-room or 
attempted the ascent of a hazardous peak. Major 
Dalbignac neither possessed his clothes or was possessed 
of them. They were as much a part and expression 
of himself as the leaves are of the tree. 

The shaggy man in shabby gray standing on the steps 
eyed the long-limbed, splendid figure moodily. 

The soldier leapt up the steps, four at a time, ignoring 
the other or not seeing him. 


TWO MEN AND A WOMAN 


241 


“Half a mo, Lady Rachel,” he called in his easy gallant 
way. “I must just get my hat.” 

John Blunt tramped down the steps and pinched the 
back tire of the girl’s bicycle. 

Then he began to pump it up. 

The Major appeared on the steps. 

“Hi, man ! don’t do that ! ” he called. “ I have pumped 
it up. You’ll bust it.” 

The darned breeches turned to him did not stir, and 
the pump worked on doggedly. 

Then the pumper rose, his face rather red. 

“I think that’ll do,” he said. 

Dalbignac tittered. 

“I’m sure it will,” cried Rachel joyfully. “Now, 
children, come along.” 

She mounted, settled herself, and flowed slowly 
away. 

The Major swaggered out into the sweep and watched 
her critically. 

“Is that comfortable?” he called. “I’m afraid he’s 
filled your tire too tight. Isn’t it bumping you?” 

“Come on, children!” came the girl’s rich voice, as 
she swept away under the beeches. “Come on! 
come on!” 

John Blunt mounted and pursued. 

The Major passed him easily, free-wheeling down the 
drive, while the other drove his cranky old machine with 
hard labour. 

There was a sardonic curl about the soldier’s lip as 
he swept past, but he said nothing. 

John Blunt grumbled in his beard. 


242 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

The fellow hadn’t even the manners to say good 
morning! 

The Major caught the girl before the gate, and the two 
rode on side by side. 

John Blunt laboured behind with bowed shoulders, 
his eyes on their backs. 

The soldier opened the gate for the girl, and the two 
disappeared into the road. 

John Blunt’s face darkened. 

He could hear them laughing in the road beyond, and 
caught an occasional glimpse of their heads flowing along 
side by side. 

Then he turned round into the road himself. 

The two had dismounted. The Major was helping 
the girl off with her coat. 

“What a splendid old bike!” she cried joyously, as 
John Blunt rolled up. “Only I’m afraid you’ll find 
it rather heavy at the hills.” 

The three rode on now side by side, the girl between 
the two men, and suiting her space to the rackety machine 
upon her right. 

A timber wagon was approaching, and the road was 
none too broad. 

Neither man would give way, the Spirit of Resistance 
riding high in the breast of each. 

They rode past the wagon three abreast. 

“ Whoo!” cried the girl, her eyes sparkling and mouth 
round. “Rather a squash!” 

Dalbignac was riding in th« gutter, John Blunt fending 
off the wagon with his right hand, the girl crushed be- 
tween them. 


TWO MEN AND A WOMAN 243 

Just as they cleared the wagon, the three bicycles 
clashed gently together; and the girl dismounted. 

“I say! has he hurt you?” cried Dalbignac anxiously. 

“Barging into ladies!” muttered the other, all thunder 
and lightning. 

The girl mounted with a smile, half mischievous, half 
wistful. 

“Now be good, children,” she coaxed. “Remember 
I’m responsible.” 

They passed the gates of a great house, white among 
trees upon their left. 

“Are the Ponsonbys at home?” asked the Major. 

“I don’t know,” replied the girl coldly. 

Her sweet instincts told her aright that the soldier’s 
aim was so to manipulate the conversation as to keep 
the other out of it. 

“You know Sybil Ponsonby’s engaged to Harold 
Temple in my regiment?” 

The girl didn’t answer, and the other coasted ahead. 

Rachel lifted her eyes to John Blunt’s face, dark and 
silent at her side. 

“Tired, Blunt?” she teased, “or bored?” 

“I’m all right,” he answered. 

She looked up at him. 

“You haven’t called me, ‘my dear,’ for a long time, 
Blunt,” she said tentatively. 

“I’m not going to any more.” 

He rapped the words out almost roughly. 

The girl dropped her eyes only to lift them wistfully . 

“Why not?” 

He answered nothing, driving doggedly ahead. 


244 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


A faint colour stole over her face. 

They were riding through an avenue of beeches. 

The wind ran like a stream through the trees above 
them and seemed to lift the girl’s soul on its waves. 

“My best times have been alone with nature,” she said 
softly. Those are the times one remembers.” The 
laughing wrinkles began to gather about her nostrils. 
“ I like people best when they aren’t with me. Then they 
are most with me. Is that rude?” 

Her voice came to him rich and rustling as they swished 
through dead leaves. 

The Spirit of Resistance began to die down in 
his face. 

Behind the green and yellow of the lowlands the blue 
hills lifted splendid-dim. Through the arch of the trees 
at the end of the avenue Ewebarrow’s sharp spine ap- 
peared, and High Peak lifted a hood-like head across the 
dale. Before them the Scaur lay squandered, the light 
green and glimmering on its broad back. 

They emerged into the sun. 

“Everybody’s smiling to-day,” cried the girl. “We 
must smile too. Cock-a-doodle-doo!” 

The dark face beside her was lightening every moment. 

“So many animals,” chuckled the girl. “It’s like a 
farm yard in a children’s picture. There’s a bow-wow, 
and a moo-cow, and a goosey-goosey-gander.” 

John Blunt began to laugh. 

They crossed the Wart, noisy beneath them, and 
swung to the left. 

A hen ran across the road. 

y “ I bumped into one once,” laughed the girl. “ We were 


TWO MEN AND A WOMAN 245 

both so frightened.” He looked at her with wonderfully 
kind eyes. 

She seemed to have dissipated all his clouds. 

They got off to climb a hill. 

Half way up, the girl looked back over the lowlands 
to the sea, broad-bosomed and shining beyond the 
sand-hills. 

“Majoopa!” she cried, and pointed. 

He turned. 

Far away behind the dark of trees and green of low- 
lands he saw the white line of the sand-hills and the 
fortress hill rising square-crested against the shine of 
the sea. 

“That’s him,” he said, and repeated softly to himself, 
“Majoopa.” 

She climbed on. 

“Where’s the other leetle boy?” she asked. “Ah, 
there he is, waiting for us at the top.” 

They were now in the stone-wall and bracken-country. 

The road ran steeply up and down, the hills heaving 
tumultuously in front. Warton Fell lifted on their right, 
firs in the gully between, and gray rocks showing out of 
the bracken. 

Dalbignac waited them at the roadside. 

“Isn’t it gorgeous?” cried the girl. “It’s like 
Scotland.” 

“Yes,” he answered. “This bit here reminds me of the 
Glenattocks’ place; doesn’t it you?” 

She ignored him. 

“And the little cows on the hill side — d’you see, Mr. 
Blunt?” 


246 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

The bracken ran down to the road in already rusting 
flood. 

“I always think of this as a forest for fairies,” said 
the girl. “Think of the little people wandering about on 
the moss among the great stems with its huge spreading 
branches overhead.” She bent down and peeped. “I 
can see one,” she whispered eagerly. “He’s a little 
man in a green coat with a white princess in a gossamer- 
gray dress on his arm. It’s a fairy wedding like 
Blake saw.” 

Dalbignac peered and peeped too. 

“I can’t see him,” he chaffed. 

“Of course you can’t,” mocked the girl. “Only 
Eyes can see. No Eyes can’t see.” 

They rode along once more side by side. At a long 
downhill sweep the girl and Dalbignac swept ahead, free- 
wheeling. John Blunt rattled, laboured, and jerked 
behind. His back tire was leaking, and at the foot of 
the slope he got off. 

“My back tire’s down,” he called. 

The girl got off, and the Major followed reluc- 
tantly. 

“How long’ll it take you to mend it?” he asked, cold 
and irritable. 

“I’ll tell you when it’s done,” the other answered. 

The sweat was on his brow, and his collar was limp. 
The Major was cool and fresh as dew. 

“We shall never get on at this pace,” muttered Dal- 
bignac. 

“There’s no hurry,” said the girl, sitting down on the 
bank. 


TWO MEN AND A WOMAN 247 

“He’s in a hurry for his food,” laughed John Blunt 
harshly. 

The girl’s brow clouded. 

The Major walked slowly up the opposite hill, wheeling 
her bicycle and his own. 

The girl followed thoughtfully behind. 

The damage repaired, John Blunt joined her. 

She shot her eyes up at him. 

“I like you best when you’re not rough,” she 
said, low. 

He turned his great glowing eyes on hers. 

“So do I,” he said. “Smooth me.” 

She looked away. 

“I’ll try,” she replied. 

There was a moment’s pause, and then he answered 
solemnly, 

“So will I.” 

Her throat was full, and her eyes tender and very 
beautiful, but she said nothing. 

They were now well in Blackdale. The hills were no 
longer dim and whole: the scars and wounds of Time 
began to show on their veteran flanks. 

“How they march in on you!” cried the girl. 

Ewebarrow footed it down into the dale, the sun making 
rainbow hues of the autumn bracken about its base. 
High Peak lifted a prim head beyond, a curl of cloud 
swathing its summit. Kirk Mell was green and round 
and glimmering upon their left, and the black bastions 
of the Scaur rose towering and tremendous above gray 
screes. 

They rode now under scrubby oaks in the shadow of 


248 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


the Scaur. That sinister hill seemed to topple over 
them, dark-pinnacled and terrible through leaves. 

The girl was rumbling deeply to herself as she rode. 

John Blunt began to rumble too. Their eyes met 
and smiled. 

The Major, riding in front, heard them and half turned. 
An expression of scornful amusement showed itself upon 
his handsome face. He didn’t understand that. 

“Here’s our gate!” cried the girl. 

She dismounted and passed out of the shadow of the 
trees into an open meadow. 

Across it the Scaur rose, grim battlemented and gloomy. 

“Oh!” cried the girl. “Isn’t he a gloomy grand old 
savage?” 

Her eyes flashed involuntarily at the grim and gloomy 
man brooding beside her, and dropped swiftly. 

It had come in upon her how like were man and hill. 

They wheeled their bicycles down a rough track and 
across a turnip field. Then they had to cross a hedge 
upon a bank. Dalbignac went first, and handed the 
girl over. 

“If you’ll hand me Lady Rachel’s bicycle from that 
side,” he said to his rival, standing in the ditch to receive 
it. 

John Blunt took the girl’s bicycle, hoisted it above his 
head, and poising it so, topped the bank, crossed the 
hedge, and dropped into the field. 

“Ha! quite the athlete,” sneered the soldier. 

John Blunt said nothing, setting his lips. 

He had promised her that he would try. 

The girl was standing in the farm yard in front. 


TWO MEN AND A WOMAN 249 

‘‘There’s a foal in here!” she called. “Do come 
and see.” 

She was leaning up against a closed door, her arm lost 
to view. 

In the darkness within a little, wild-eyed, woolly 
thing, fawn coloured, trotted up and down, whinnying. 

“Where’s the dam?” asked John Blunt. 

“At work presumably,” replied the Guardsman tartly. 

“They oughtn’t to work them in that condition.” 

“They’ve got to get their corn in, I suppose,” replied 
the other acridly. “Man can’t live on ideals alone — 
at least the plain man can’t.” 

John Blunt held his tongue till he trembled. 

The girl had turned her back, and was walking on. 

“Come on, you two boys,” she called. 

Upon an old lichened bridge under trees she paused. 

The stream ran rough and gray and gleaming beneath 
and was a lovely roan or salmon pink under the ashes 
on the bank. 

The girl leaned over and watched it. 

“Here it says — Whoop ! ” she murmured. “There it 
says — Get along! and gives a sort of resistance. Under 
here it’s full of zeal. There it turns nasty and says — I 
won't.” 

She chattered to herself like a child, her eyes smiling 
at the men beside her. Then she crossed a stile, and 
walked along a high bank, the river rustling under ash 
and alder on her right. 

The water was swift, shining, gurgling here, rebellious 
there, and ruffling swiftly along up and down a myriad 
tiny hills and dales. 


250 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


They passed through a little spinney of oak and hazel, 
crossed a stone wall, and came out into the open beneath 
the Scaur. 

It swept down to the bed of the stream covered with 
bracken and stunted thorn. The bracken ran into 
slaty screes and these again into dark buttresses of 
rock that sheered up solemnly against the sky. 

Two black birds flashed up the river screaming. One, 
white-waistcoated and stump-tailed, perched on a rock. 

“Dippers! dippers! darlings!” cried the girl, spreading 
out her arms and her voice lovely with emotion. “I 
am so fond of them.” 

Oaks on the far bank swept almost across the stream, 
and the water beneath them flowed mysterious, dark, 
and very smooth, a long-tressed green weed shining 
through it. 

They walked along the bank amid brambles, bracken, 
and stones. 

The water here was dark almost as the Scaur above but 
shining and not dull as those war-grimed buttresses, 
the bare bones of which were clothed scantily by heather 
that looked from beneath like moss. 

"“See the little ashes!” cried the girl, pointing up. 
“They look like ferns seen from here. Wonderful how 
they grow up there! Life, eternal life springing always 
and everywhere!” 

The water swept in a shining curve round a green tongue 
of land, and the green-tressed weed became an amazing 
crimson. On the other bank blue firs crept down to the 
water's edge, a jay scolding within them. Behind lifted 
Ewebarrow, the sun gleaming on its sharp spine. 


TWO MEN AND A WOMAN 


251 


Under the firs the water broadened like the hood of a 
snake, narrowed down to a tiny isthmus, and ran out 
from the lake through banks of gray shale. 

The hood was smooth and dark and shining, the firs 
reflected in it perfectly. Trout rose in it with little 
plops. Under the far bank two moor-hen swam. 

“The Enchanted Pool!” cried the girl. “There’s 
Cousin Florence and luncheon.” 


XXXVI 


LADY FLORENCE IS AFRAID 

Lord Hillyard sat upon a bowlder, plump and 
pince-nez’d. 

The autumn lady squatted among the contents of 
luncheon baskets strewn upon the turf. Her large and 
beautiful hands were busy with paper parcels, and the 
stern nobility of her face harmonized well with her 
surroundings. 

“Well, my lady, how did you manage your team?” 
she whispered mischievously, as Rachel knelt at her side. 

“They were rather kick-y,” replied the girl in the 
same tone. 

“Ha! ha! my lady!” chuckled the other, and lifting her 
voice: “Who’s for salmon?” 

The luncheon party was not a success. 

A cloud had descended on John Blunt. Fifty years 
old, he was oppressed with that sort of school-boy self- 
consciousness that often assails the man who has lived 
much alone when he emerges into society. He w r as 
half shy, half sulky, and whole miserable. ‘ His tongue 
was tied, and his heart water-logged. Struggle as he 
could he seemed unable to emerge from beneath his cloud. 
And the sense that he was a cloud, dulling the spirits 
of those about him, only thickened his gloom and made 
252 


LADY FLORENCE IS AFRAID 


253 


him cloudier. He sat apart and munched, in the party 
but not of it, aware of his isolation and aware that he 
was making others aware of it. 

They all felt it, but Dalbignac most of all. His rival’s 
gloom was for the Guardsman an inspiration. He was 
at his best, chattering brilliantly with his mouth full, 
amused and amusing. Even Lord Hilly ard smiled, while 
Rachel tossed to and fro, and Lady Florence chuckled. 

There was Class written all over him. He seemed to 
radiate it, exhaling delicately that atmosphere of Z- 
am-what-you-are-not , the utter absence of which perhaps 
distinguishes the gentleman and the Christian more than 
any positive characteristic. 

His ease and brilliance only added to the other’s 
awkwardness and gloom and was indeed a main cause of 
it, and meant to be. 

Both ladies tried loyally to lift that gloom and John 
Blunt in his turn essayed with a sort of sullen desperation, 
as of a great beast caught in the toils, to answer to their 
efforts and break through the cloud oppressing him. 

He tried in vain, relapsing into a murky silence. It 
was as though his rival had cast a spell about him, which 
he could not break. 

Lord Hilly ard cocked an eye at him. 

“Try some of this, Blunt,” he said. 

The other shook his head, and retreated farther into 
the dark of his cloud. But for his blinking eyes and 
munching jaws he might have been an idol. 

Only once he spoke. 

“Boiled egg, please,” he said. 

Dalbignac collapsed suddenly on the broad of his back, 


254 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


and pulled his hat over his eyes. His legs twitched, 
and his stomach was greatly moved. 

“Sit up properly!” ordered Lady Florence, stern but 
twinkling, while Rachel eddied and dimpled. 

After luncheon the little party broke up. 

Lord Hillyard strolled down to the water’s edge with 
a cigar. Dalbignac joined him there and threw ducks 
and drakes with an affectation of discontent. It was 
clear that he was in high spirits. 

“The man’s like a thunder cloud,” he muttered. 
“What’s he want to come for if he can’t behave himself? 
Spoiling the ladies’ pleasure.” He jerked a stone out 
into the lake. “The chap’s out of it. Why can’t he 
stick to his own class?” 

Lord Hillyard puffed. 

“He is not one of us,” he said. “And perhaps he’s 
none the worse for that.” 

John Blunt rolled over on his side. 

He knew he was making a fool of himself, and he 
seemed unable to help it. 

It was one of those moments in life which come with 
a rush out of the past to men already gray to remind them 
that they are still but babes. 

Suddenly and with his whole heart he longed for his 
mother — her hand, her word, her smile; comfort from 
the one woman who always understood, encouragement 
from the one soul who never doubted. 

Once more he was a little boy standing lost and forlorn 
on a great wind-swept platform, his eyes on a black skirt 
fluttering away in the distance. 


LADY FLORENCE IS AFRAID 


255 


Home was behind him, School before. 

Lying there hemmed about by the great dumb hills, 
the old seas of desolation drowned him. 

He turned over on his face. 

A little thin green book lay in the heather hard by 
him. It was “The Recluse !” and on the fly-leaf were the 
initials R. C. 

He turned the leaves meditatively till he came to the 
passage : 

Where’er my footsteps turned. 

Her voice was like a hidden bird that sang, . 

The thought of her was like a flash of light. 

Or an unseen companionship, a breath 
Of fragrance independent of the wind. 

His face softened; the cloud lifted; and he read the 
passage approvingly and with grunts. 

“Well, what you grunting about, Teddy B’ar?” said a 
mocking voice above him. 

He looked up into a pair of brimming brown eyes. 

Rachel was bending over him, her hands between 
her knees. 

“Gimme my book,” she ordered. “You can read 
Uncle Hilary’s financial supplement of the Times” 

“He can’t do that,” came Lord Hillyard’s one-word-a- 
minute voice, “because Uncle Hilary is about to read 
it himself.” 

“Cock-a-doodle-doo!” mocked the girl. “Now I’m 
going for a stroll.” 

She took her book and wandered off across the gray 
shalebank among the bowlders and along the edge of 
the lake. The book was open in her hand, but her eyes 


256 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

dwelt on the grim battlements, dark and terrible 
above her. 

John Blunt watched her blouse white against the 
blue-gray of the bowlders, and that modest droop of 
the shoulders which he had learned to love. 

His eyes were hungry on her, his mouth uncertain. 

Should he follow her? 

A voice within him shouted Yes: then something which 
he realized to be contrary to his own best interests, and 
yet could not somehow overcome, smothered the voice. 

Was it Fate? 

Was it that school-boy self-consciousness from which 
he seemed unable to free himself? 

He half clambered to his feet — and then sank back 
again. 

His hesitation had undone him. 

Dalbignac had risen from among the bowlders and taken 
his place at the girl’s side. 

> John Blunt saw her face upturned to the tall soldier’s 
bending above her. 

He could not hear what they were saying, but the 
Major suddenly threw back his head and laughed, and 
the girl dropped her eyes. 

They were talking of him, mocking him — he was sure 
of it. 

A dark scud of passion swept across his face. He sat 
up, and tearing a sprig of heather, began to chew it, 
growling to himself. 

Lady Florence, busy among the debris of luncheon, 
heard him and looked up. She saw the look on his face 
and became grave. Then she glanced behind her in the 


LADY FLORENCE IS AFRAID 257 

direction in which the growling savage gazed, and saw 
the two figures walking among rocks by the water's edge. 

As she looked Dalbignac thrust out his hand to the girl 
and helped her from one bowlder to the next. 

John Blunt scrambled to his feet. 

“Mr. Blunt,” called Lady Florence, rather flurried for 
once, “help me to pack up, will you?” 

“ No, I’ll be dashed if I do ! ” mumbled the other. “ I’m 
to do flunkey while he goes off with her!” 

There was something so simple, so direct, and childish 
about the man’s violence that Lady Florence almost 
laughed. 

John Blunt began to slouch in pursuit of the young 
pair. 

“You’re not wanted that way!” called Lady Florence, 
short and sharp. 

“Aren’t I ? ” retorted the other. “That’s the way I’m 
going all the same.” 

He crossed the blue shale. 

The two in front had struck a tiny track faintly pen- 
cilled among bowlders some twenty feet above the water. 

Far above them amongst grim battlements two ravens 
flapped and swore solemnly. Here and there a grimy 
sheep stood perilously on the steep screes. 

John Blunt followed along the edge of the lake, his 
eyes on the pair in front. 

The water was clear and shelved down very deep over 
slaty shale. Here and there it plopped and gurgled 
pleasantly round a bowlder. 

The pair were a hundred yards in front, the Guards- 


258 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


man leading on the narrow track and now and then 
looking back to direct the feet of the delicately walking 
figure behind him. 

John Blunt felt a strange anger and discontent in his 
heart. 

Had he taken his chance he would be now where that 
other was, and would not have insulted Lady Florence. 
What a duffer he had been! How these men of the world 
with their easy ways and shallow hearts bested him! 
Gnawing his anger, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, 
he stumbled along among the bowlders at the lakeside. 
His eyes, glued to the backs of the pair in front, paid no 
attention to his feet. Twice and thrice he almost fell. 
Yet his eyes wandered always back to the white blouse 
and delicately walking figure on the hill side above him. 

Then he paused with thrilled heart. 

The girl had turned and was creeping back 
toward him. 

The Guardsman was looking after her, talking, maybe 
remonstrating. 

Had he offended her? 

The cloud lifted from John Blunt’s face. His eye 
sparkled and nostrils expanded. Had he been a dog, 
his ears would have been cocked. 

Then the cloud descended once more. 

The white blouse had turned again. It was clear the 
girl had only been avoiding some difficulty of the path at 
the suggestion of her companion. 

Now the two rounded the shoulder, and were soon out 
of sight. 

John Blunt sat down on a bowlder by the waterside, 


LADY FLORENCE IS AFRAID 


259 


his face gloomy as the bastions above him, and his eyes 
smouldering. 

The Spirit of Resistance overshadowed him. 

Blackwater ran like a shining floor from his feet to 
the hills opposite. One white sail flecked the lake far 
away, and from the darkness of the Enchanted Pool a 
boat pushed forth between the narrow shale-banks. 

The water was a fairy blue, fresh and faintly ruffled. 
It ran before him to Ewebarrow rising sharp-spined in 
the sun. 

Across the lake the road ran dipping between the water 
and the hills. On a rise under Kirk-Mell a carriage had 
stopped and some one was shouting for the echo. 

The boat from the Enchanted Pool plodded slowly by, 
a woman in it talking with country accent. 

Far overhead three ravens flapped and barked in a 
rock-chimney. 

Ever and anon John Blunt looked sharply to his right. 

There was no sign of returning figures. 

At last he rose and leaving the shore clambered up the 
shoulder to the track along which the two had gone. 

He had not far to seek. 

Just round the shoulder he heard a cuckoo and saw a 
white blouse through a thorn tree. 

The girl was wading back through bracken toward 
him, Dalbignac loitering some way behind. 

She was walking swiftly and stumbled as he looked. 

“Hold up!” he called, and all his clouds cleared away 
as she lifted her face to his. 

“ Hullo ! ” she cried and waved to him. “ Here you are. 
Major Dalbignac’s been to the screes.” 


260 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


In a moment she was beside him, rather breathless 
and dashed like a daffodil caught in an April shower; and 
her eyes were scared. 

“Did you hear the ravens?” she panted. “I think 
they are so interesting. They flew up one of these 
gorges, and their voices grew deeper, deeper , DEEPER — 
as they got inside.” She ruled her unruly bosom and 
steadied her voice. “Look! I’ve found some oak-fern, 
and this is cedum.” 

“And here’s some mountain parsley,” he replied. 

“No, dear man,” she answered. “It’s not real 
mountain parsley though it’s like. This is the male 
and that the female,” she added delicately, and showed 
him. 

He looked down at her dainty feet shod in flimsy brown 
shoes. 

“You’ve cut your shoes to pieces,” he said. “Come 
back my way — along the waterside.” 

She began to descend the steep, and he held out his 
hand toward her. 

“I shouldn’t go down there,” came the Guardsman’^ 
voice, calm and confident from the path. “This is our 
best way. Stick to the track, Lady Rachel.” 

The girl followed John Blunt down to the water’s 
edge, her hand in his. 

“You’ll find it better going down here, Lady Carmel- 
ite,” he said in an unnecessarily loud voice. 

“Lady Rachel ,” corrected the Guardsman, sauntering 
along the track above them. “Lady Rachel. You 
should try to remember that.” 

There was a touch of gray about his cheek. 


LADY FLORENCE IS AFRAID 261 

John Blunt grinned. He was winning and could afford 
to be amused. 

“You be advised by me and come down too, old 
chap,” said he. “You’ll cut those swagger patent leather 
boots of yours to atoms up there.” 

“They aren’t boots; and they aren’t patent leather; 
and my name’s Dalbignac,” corrected the soldier coldly. 

“Major Dalbignac, D. S. O.,” chuckled John Blunt, 
“and don’t you forget it.” 

The girl put a hushing finger on his arm. 

“Oh, what a wonderful world!” she cried, and kissed 
her fingers to the hills. “Look at the bracken! How 
glorious it will be here in a few days! I wish I wasn’t 
going.” 

“Are you?” asked John Blunt suddenly. “When?” 

“ Day after to-morrow — Saturday, worse luck. 
Oh, I hope that boat hasn’t spoiled the charm of our 
Enchanted Pool.” 

Lady Florence was on her knees beside the table- 
cloth when they returned to her. 

“Here you are at last,” she said sharply. “What an 
age you’ve been, Rachel! Major Dalbignac, will you 
help me to pack up? Mr. Blunt’s refused.” 

The Major knelt down in the heather. 

“Mr. Blunt’s manners are as original as he is,” 
he said. 

John Blunt plodded clumsily toward Lady Florence, 
contemplating an apology. And it was like the simplicity 
and sincerity of the man that he proposed to make his 
uncouth amend regardless of the presence of his enemy. 


262 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“Mr. Blunt !” called Rachel, sharply. 

The girl was standing at the edge of the pool. 

He turned slowly and went to her side. 

She said nothing. 

He looked at her. 

“Is that a moor-hen?” she asked indifferently, pointing 
at a stone. 

Behind them Lady Florence and Major Dalbignac 
packed on their knees. 

“Where’s Mr. Blunt?” asked Lord Hillyard, strolling 
up. “Why is he not helping? What’s he up to?” 

“I don’t know,” said the Major, low enough for manners 
and loud enough to be heard. “Insulting somebody, 
I suppose. He usually is.” 

John Blunt stood with his back turned, and plugged 
a stone into the water with extraordinary violence. The 
pool was shivered to atoms. All its charm and stillness 
dissipated. 

Rachel turned swiftly and with a shudder. 

“Why did you do that?” she asked in a low voice. 

“I don’t know,” answered the brooding giant moodily. 

The baskets were now packed. 

“Will you carry both, Major Dalbignac?” asked Lady 
Florence loudly. “Mr. Blunt would say I was flunkey - 
ing him if I asked him to take one.” 

The Major laughed harshly and stood up a basket in 
each hand. 

“It’s too much to expect of a Socialist to do his share 
of the work,” he said, and John Blunt trembled to 
the lash. 

Lady Florence picked up her parasol. 


LADY FLORENCE IS AFRAID 


263 


“We must be getting back. I don’t want Lord Hill- 
yard to be out late. Come, Rachel.” 

“I’m coming,” said the girl, cold and downcast. 

The little party set off amid bracken, bowlders, and 
heather. Dalbignac’s shoulders were pulled down by 
the weight of the basket in each hand. 

“May I carry one?” whispered Rachel at his side. 

“No, no,” replied the soldier. “I’ll do his share.” 

Rachel hurried swiftly on. 

John Blunt slouched behind, munching till the foam 
came. 

All within him was darkness shot with lightning, and 
a maelstrom raging. This smooth enemy shot poisoned 
arrows into his heart at each discharge. He felt like 
a well-meaning rhinoceros battling with an unscru- 
pulous cobra, clumsily impotent and bellowing because 
of it. 

The little party came to a stile. Lord Hillyard crossed 
first, and then Major Dalbignac. The ladies followed. 
The Major waited for them at the foot of the stile, his 
back turned, and let them pass him. 

Rachel walked swiftly on, her head down, and was soon 
lost to view in the spinney. Lord Hillyard and Lady 
Florence followed leisurely. 

Dalbignac waited at the foot of the stile. 

John Blunt was crossing it, battling and brooding, 
hands deep in his pockets. 

The Major, standing beneath him, lifted a sardonic 
visage. 

“Mr. Blunt,” he said, the snow scuds blowing about 
his face, “I’ve no doubt you’re not aware that in Society 


264 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

men get over stiles first and leave the ladies to follow 
them.” 

A lightning smile flashed across the other’s face. The 
Spirit of Resistance leashed all day was slipped at last. 
John Blunt jumped lightly down, seized the Guardsman 
by his long shoulders, spun him about, and kicked him. 

“Joy!” he cried, rumbling deep laughter. 

The other dropped both baskets with a crash. 

“Oh, my poor crockery!” cried Lady Florence, run- 
ning back. 

Then she saw the look on the two men’s faces and went 
dead white. Her knees gave beneath her. For the first 
and last time in her life the soul of Lady Florence Bracken- 
hurst was afraid. Putting both fists to her eyes, she 
screamed, 

“Bobo!” 

Lord Hillyard came pottering back at a little fussy trot, 
his pince-nez flopping on his white waistcoat, and extra- 
ordinary determination on his face. 

“What is it? What’s the matter?” he panted. 

Lady Florence smothered him with her arms. 

“Men!” she sobbed. “Come away! Come away! 
What’s the good? You shan’t!” and she bundled him 
off by main force. 


XXXVII 


UNDER THE SCAUR 

The two men stood over against each other under the 
Scaur in that same spot where a hundred centuries before 
two bull bisons had clashed horns to the death for the 
sake of the white heifer lowing in the brake by the 
waterside. 

Both were big men, six feet two as they stood. John 
Blunt was a stone the better man, but his head was 
gray as the other’s was dark, and he was bear to his 
opponent’s panther; shaggy as his enemy was smooth; 
steadfast as the other was sinuous. 

He stood now with his hands swinging at his side, his 
head a little forward, grimly amused. 

Just so had he stood on the day when he had killed 
his man outside Johnny Johnston’s shanty on the Orange 
River a quarter of a century before. 

His feet firmly planted, he waited his opponent, steady 
as a rock. 

Those men who had seen George Dalbignac lead his 
rush at Paardeberg knew he was no coward. 

At the blow he leaped about and came for the other 
with a hiss like a squall across the sea. His teeth flashed 
white, and his eyes blazed in a face gray as falling snow. 

265 


266 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


He drew his breath with a soughing sound that was half 
rattle and half gasp. 

For the moment he was no longer man. 

The old wild beast who still lurks within us all, subdued 
indeed these ages past, bound about and caged, was 
lashed to sudden fury. He snapped the chains that had 
been slowly riveted upon him through the centuries; 
he flung against the bars of the cage that it had taken 
seons of patient labour to build about him; and rushed 
ravening forth to destroy or be destroyed. 

And the very moment he was free, free to be the slave 
of his own violence, a myriad invisible hands thrust forth 
out of the dimness of the past to drag him back into the 
captivity whence he had just escaped. Just so the sea, 
breaking bounds, flings in white and frothy flood up the 
beach, only to be dragged back by the inexorable law of 
its own being. 

Man down, and Beast rampant, Man forthwith began 
to rise again on his own ruins. The slow-accumulating 
restraints of all the ages, the discipline inherited from 
a thousand partially disciplined forebears, the gathering 
momentum of civilization, the habit of the centuries, 
and all that great flood of dim unconscious forces within 
a man that testify to his noble heritage of law, that 
make for peace and progress, that lift him above 
his brother-beasts, added to the self-control engendered 
by a few tiny years of conscious education, leagued 
together to hurl the usurping Beast from the Throne 
of Man. 

Dalbignac stopped short. He was trembling from head 
to toe, and heaving furiously. 


UNDER THE SCAUR 267 

It was John Blunt’s turn to be nonchalant. He 
watched the other’s emotion with grim amusement. 

“Shook you up a bit, eh?” he said. His words seemed 
to rise like bubbles from deep waters. “Made you come 
out of it. Why, you look quite like a man.” 

The other thrust out a shaking hand. 

“I want your card,” hoarsely. 

“I haven’t got one.” 

“Then give me your name, and your solicitor’s 
address.” 

“My name you know. I have no solicitor.” 

He was as calm as the other was shaken. 

“Then what is your permanent address?” 

“If you look me up in ‘Who’s Who’ you’ll see.” 

Rebuffed all along the line, the soldier swung about. 

“You shall hear from me again, Mr. Blunt.” 

Lord Hillyard sat bolt upright in the carriage. Lady 
Florence at his side. 

The little man was very tight and trembling. His collar 
was unbuttoned, and he was much the colour of rime; but 
there was a dignity about him that was almost terrible. 

His friends and chance acquaintances would never 
have recognized in this tremendous little man the paunchy 
person who sat by the hour in an arm-chair at the Carl- 
ton Club and smoked, sipped, and chattered. 

“I shall never forgive you this, Florence,” said he for 
the tenth time. 

The tears were streaming down the face of the woman 
at his side. She was shaking and still extraordinarily 
moved. 


268 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“ Dear little man,” she sobbed, “what could you 
have done? Pluck! You’ve the pluck of a lion. But 
what’s the good of pluck ! You want weight, bones, beef.” 

“I shall never forgive you this, Florence,” repeated the 
other icily and with set lips. 

“Dear Bobo!” sobbed the wretched woman, “I was 
so frightened I really was beside myself with funk.” 

The school-girl touch seemed to move the little man. 
He relaxed somewhat. The icy look left his face; and 
his breathing eased. 

“I should walk home,” he said, “only my legs aren’t 
strong enough for my stomach.” 

She dared to put her hand upon his knee. 

“My plucky little bantam-man !” she sniffed. “Two 
great mastiffs like that!” 

John Blunt tramped up carrying the two baskets, 
and put them in the carriage. 

The banked fires were glowing in his eyes. 

Nobody spoke. 

Lady Florence’s eyes rested furtively on his face and 
then snatched away. 

Lord Hillyard was watching Dalbignac’s back as he 
bicycled off. The Major seemed in a hurry, and the 
skirts of his long-waisted coat floated out behind him. 

The footman climbed to his place. 

“All right,” said Lord Hillyard, and the carriage drove 
away. 

Rachel wheeled her bicycle through the gate and 
mounted. 


UNDER THE SCAUR 


269 

“Major Dalbignac’s gone on,” she said in subdued 
voice. 

Something had happened: she didn’t know what. 

John Blunt rode at her side. 

Neither spoke. 

Suddenly the girl got off. A gust swept through her. 

She bowed her head to it and showered down tears. 

“I’m awfully sorry,” she cried. “I — I can’t help it. 
I’m always like this.” 

He took her bicycle and wheeled it for her. 

She walked by the roadside, sobbing. 

“I do hate rows so,” she wept. “It ought to have 
been so beautiful — and it’s been so horrid.” She lifted 
a rain- washed face. “I know it’s not your fault.” 

John Blunt grunted. 

She mounted, and they rode home quietly together. 
He was as grave as she and grayer. 

As they neared home, a blood-red sunset glowed at 
them, deep and splendid, through the blackness of the 
hedge. 

“A glorious sunset,” he said quietly. “Pity there’s 
the hedge between.” 

“There’s always a hedge between,” said the girl, still 
rainy. “We build our own hedges between the sun and 
ourselves and then wonder we only catch glimpses of it.” 

He nodded. 

“You’re right,” he said. 

At the front gates both dismounted. He was 
strangely still. 

“Good-bye, Lady Rachel,” he said. 

She held his great hand a moment. 


270 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“ Good-bye, Mr. Blunt,” she said with shaking throat. 
“I’m off on Saturday. Ships that pass in the 
night — eh? ” 

She gave him a wistful little nod and wave and passed 
through the great gates. 

His face against the bars, he watched her white blouse 
flowing slowly away among the smooth-stemmed beeches. 

Then he took off his hat to her receding back. 

His eyes were deep and wistful as he walked through 
the village, wheeling his bicycle, and whistling softly to 
himself; subdued as the evening. 

He did not see the women smiling at him in the cottage 
doors; but little lame Willie Jameson, who came limping 
across the road to meet his friend, he picked up, perched 
upon his saddle, and wheeled up the hill. 

Later little W T illie told his mother that the gentleman 
had kissed him. 

The Unspeakable Blunt had kissed a little boy! 

It would have amused the men of the Carlton Club 
had they heard. 


XXXVIII 

JOHN BLUNT FORGETS 

All night John Blunt lay awake, and heard the peewits 
melancholy in the darkness without. 

Once he got up and went to the window. The stubble 
lay dim in the darkness beneath him. The moon 
gleamed misty behind a film of cloud. Over dark flats 
he could see the sand-hills looming dimly in the night 
and a white roll of fog lying like a huge snake along 
the river. 

For some time he prowled the room white-limbed, 
groaning to himself. Then he paused before his mother’s 
miniature, dim-seen in the darkness, lit a candle, and 
wrote deliberately: 

Dear little Mother : 

I have done it again — the old trouble. A bad bust 
out. 

Because of it I wrecked my Parliamentary career; and 
because of it I have now missed my chance. 

And all this misery and wretchedness because a little boy, 
loved by foolish you, wouldn’t — or was it couldn’t? — pay 
heed to his mother’s warnings many years ago. 

Well, wherever the fault lies, it does not lie with that diligent 
little lady. 


271 


272 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


May the Mother of mothers bless and comfort her. 

Your little son. 

In bad disgrace, 

Jacko. 

Don’t worry, dear little soul over there. It’ll all come out 
in the washing. 

Then he returned to bed but not to sleep. 

The window began to grow wan, and the bed showed 
gray. 

He dressed and went down, a towel about his neck. 

The dawn was bleak and almost livid; and a blackbird 
shrieked in it. 

There was no one stirring, and the dew lay white upon 
the road. Here and there a swallow hunted, and the 
leaves floated down from the shabby sycamores. 

A cock crowed sleepily; there was a hushed twittering 
of birds; and a far cow bellowed. 

In the night there had been heavy rain. The roofs 
were wet and shining, and only the feet of the hills were 
seen under low fringes of cloud. 

He padded down the hill in a great hush. The village 
slept, and a white fowl possessed the street. Only the 
river lived and moved upon his right, the colour of slate. 

As he passed into the fields below the Hall, the rabbits 
spurted back to the dull woods, and the gray arch of 
heaven resounded to the clangour of outward-going rooks. 

He left the track and going to the foot of the ha-ha 
stared up through the trees at the house. 

It lay gaunt and still in the morning, the creeper 
reddening its gray face. 


JOHN BLUNT FORGETS 273 

The blinds of two of the centre windows were up, and 
the windows themselves wide. 

At one of them he thought he saw a white figure. 

John Blunt, standing in the ditch among dead leaves, 
shuddered and dropped his eyes. 

The figure disappeared, and John Blunt returned to 
the river. 

Firs lined the bank of the stream. The water flowed 
still, clear, and smooth over a brown bed. A chestnut 
drooped like a smouldering pavilion over the waters. 
He walked along the rimy bank, the river creeping quietly 
at his side, smooth here and anon ruffled and very swift. 

Above a sandy pool a beech blazed against the blue of 
a Scotch fir showering gold on bank and water. 

Out of the heart of it a robin sang. He pursed his 
lips and trilled softly to the trilling of the bird. 

Then he bathed. 

After breakfast, contrary to his wont John Blunt did 
not go out. 

He paced up and down the room, stopping every now 
and then to stare at the patch of sky visible above the 
stone wall opposite the window. 

Out of the corner of his eye he had a glimpse of Hannah 
Fell digging potatoes in the garden at the back. 

The postman brought him a note from Martha. He 
ceased his pacing, sat down, and answered it without a 
smile. 

Dear Martha, 

You are to make it up with your sister at once like a Christian 


274 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

woman, and say you are sorry if the fault is yours as I expect 
it is. 

If Abraham put his paw through the cage and clawed your 
sister’s canary, I think she has every reason to be indignant. 
It is idle to tell me that the canary began it. 

When you have done wrong it ought to be a pleasure to say 
sorry. 

If you don’t or won’t I shall think the Christianity you learnt 
in Scotland from your favourite, Mr. Calder, when you were 
a girl was a mighty queer one. 

Yours sternly. 

Master Jack. 

I shall be coming down South in a day or two now. 

Then he began to pace again with furrowed brow. 

Once he stopped before the mantel-piece and looking 
at the photograph of the old lady there, said with extraor- 
dinary gentleness, 

“Well, dear little lady, what’s right?” 

He balanced to and fro upon his feet, searching the 
face before him. 

A light seemed to come to him. He nodded as though 
in acquiescence, and went out slowly. 

The morning was sad with a moaning wind that re- 
flected faithfully the mood of his heart. 

Barely a soul was yet astir. The same long-legged 
fowl pecked in the gold beneath the lime tree, and stalked 
and clucked, stretching her long neck, as he passed. 

The grass at the road side was still gray and dripping; 
and here and there a crowd of starlings whirled against 
the sky. 

He walked sombrely, his hands behind him and head 


JOHN BLUNT FORGETS 


27 5 


down. At the foot of the hill by the bend of the river, 
a girl curtseyed and a boy touched his cap. He paced 
on, unheeding, unseeing. The women in their doors 
watched him as he went by bareheaded and in dreams; 
and the fishermen, ordering their tackle on the veranda 
of the Brackenhurst Arms, nudged and grinned as he 
passed, solemn-pacing. 

Pensively he turned in at the great gates of the Hall, 
and marched up the drive under the beeches, his feet 
noisy on the gravel. 

Pealing laughter and a man’s jolly ha! ha! arrested him. 

He looked up over lawns rimy still in the morning. 

In front of the house Rachel and Major Dalbignac were 
playing catch together with a tennis ball. 

The Major made a feint; Rachel threw up her hands; 
and the other tossed the ball which struck the girl softly 
on her bosom. 

“Got her!” he called triumphantly. 

Lady Florence appeared in the door, and watched the 
sporting pair with smiles. 

The gong sounded. 

“Now, you young people!” cried Lady Florence, and 
passed in. 

The couple followed her. 

John Blunt watched them crush through the door 
together, the white dress and white trousers mingling 
in one. 

Then he turned and plodded back as he had come. 

On his way home he peeped through the broken pane 
into the dark stable. 


276 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


Within he saw the high white quarters of old Tom- 
horse and entered. Tom was ready harnessed for the 
day’s work. Gaunt and sepulchral he stood, his dingy 
harness hanging loosely about him. The stuffed saddle 
sat high upon his back, and his ribs showed thin be- 
neath. His flanks heaved uncertainly, for his wind was 
broken, and here and there the white hair was worn away, 
exposing patches of slaty skin. 

“Well, old man, what do you think about it?” asked 
his friend in deep and gentle voice. 

The old horse turned his patient hollow face and looked 
at the speaker. The light from the dim window fell on 
his loving blue eyes, mild and beautiful as the dusk. 

John Blunt patted his long neck. 

The old horse sawed at his rope, and sought the other’s 
hand with sniffing muzzle and expectant ears. 

Then John Blunt remembered that for the first time 
he had forgotten the old horse’s bread. 

He went home and got it. 


XXXIX 


JOHN BLUNT, SCHOOL-BOY 

John Blunt sat on one of the two chairs in his room 
with his feet resting upon the other. 

On his knee was his writing case, and on the writing 
case a letter which began : 

Dear Dalbignac: 

The rest was blank. 

It was nearly twelve o’clock, and these two words con- 
stituted his morning’s work. 

Feet sounded in the passage, and there was a mutter- 
ing of voices outside. 

Then the door burst open. 

Lord Hilly ard and Major Dalbignac entered unan- 
nounced and without a knock. 

John Blunt began to tremble — and not with fear. 
He sat back in his chair and twined his great fingers 
together. 

“Show these men out!” he said in a still white voice to 
the woman grinning darkly in the passage behind. 

“Canna,” she answered. “It’s a lord,” and departed, 
chuckling. 

Then the door shut. 

The room was tiny, and the two visitors stood squashed 
together. 


277 


278 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


It was hard to maintain an attitude of dignity in such 
cramped quarters; but Lord Hillyard, the new Lord 
Hillyard, the Lord Hillyard who had sat like ice, the 
woman he loved weeping at his side, and refused to 
forgive, did it. 

John Blunt, sitting on one chair, his feet upon the 
other, did not move; and he was black and white and 
simmering. 

“What’s the meaning of this?” he asked in the same 
still vibrating voice. 

Lord Hillyard threw back his head and glanced at the 
other through pince-nez that seemed to glitter frostily. 

All those little affectations that distinguished the man 
who liked to play the lord for his own amusement had 
vanished. Lord Hillyard was for once himself. 

“No bluff, Mr. Blunt,” he said coldly. “You realize 
our errand perfectly.” 

The other did not stir. It was as though he had not 
heard. 

“What’s the meaning of this?” he repeated in the 
same ominously still voice with the quiver in it. 

For all answer Dalbignac bent forward and plucked the 
chair from beneath his feet. 

“If Mr. Blunt hasn’t the manners to offer a man of your 
age a chair, Lord Hillyard, will you allow me to do so 
for him?” he said, urbanely insolent. 

John Blunt sprang to his feet. 

The Spirit of Resistance that had been fluttering in his 
eyes seemed suddenly to uplift the whole man and surge 
through him. 

His voice leaped from him like a tempest in a fog. 


JOHN BLUNT, SCHOOL-BOY 279 

Assault! he roared in thick and choking voice. 

Lord Hilly ard gave an indignant pshaw. 

“ Assault !” he snapped. “Fiddle! What d’you 
mean?” 

The other was heaving like an ocean, but he collected 
himself. 

“No bluff, Lord Hillyard,” he said, quiet and quiver- 
ing. “You know perfectly what I mean. Here am I 
sitting peacefully in my room when a Peer of the Realm 
and an Officer of the Guards burst in on me and never a 
a knock or a by-your-leave ” 

Lord Hillyard held up his hand. 

The other flowed on and over him in still, determined 
tide. 

“They thrust their way into my presence, taking ad- 
vantage of the fact that I haven’t half a dozen flunkeys 
to keep them out. They force ” 

Lord Hillyard twiddled his pince-nez. 

“I protest, Mr. Blunt,” he said quietly. 

“ Protest ! ” panted the other. “I should have thought 
you might have left the protesting to me, Lord Hillyard. 
First you break into my room, and then your friend here 
deliberately plucks my chair from under me. It’s noth- 
ing more or less than a common assault — and you’re 
accessory to it. ” 

The Guardsman laughed, and muttered in the other’s 
ear. John Blunt caught the word unspeakable. 

“Hush!” said Lord Hillyard, twiddling his pince- 
nez. “Let him have his little go.” 

The flood-gates of the other’s wrath suddenly flung 
wide. 


280 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


His, anger burst its bulwarks and came pouring out 
of him in lava-flood. 

“And you a magistrate!” he stormed. “An Heredi- 
tary Legislator, a Justice of the Peace, a Chairman of 
Quarter Sessions, and President of the Lord-knows-what 
league! And you encourage this sort of thing!” 

Lord Hillyard stared out of the window. 

“Give him back his chair, Dalbignac,” said the little 
peer. 

The tall soldier obeyed. 

“Mr. Blunt,” he said quietly, “if I did wrong, as per- 
haps I did, I offer you my apologies. ” 

“Very correct,” sneered John Blunt, trembling still. 
“Very correct. A credit to his regiment. But this 
doesn’t explain how you came to break into my 
room. ” 

“The woman told us to go in,” said Lord Hillyard 
quietly. 

“Didn’t you hear me tell her to show you out?” 

The little peer’s eyes flashed. 

“I heard you insult us,” he answered briskly. 

John Blunt gave way. 

“If your action was not deliberate ” 

“It was not.” 

“Then I say no more.” 

He leaned against the wall with folded arms, still 
heaving. 

Lord Hillyard cleared his throat. 

“And now, Mr. Blunt, I will proceed to state our busi- 
ness. It is that yesterday you struck Major Dalbignac. ” 

“ Struck me in the back ! ” corrected the soldier. 


JOHN BLUNT, SCHOOLBOY 281 

The last words kindled afresh the Spirit of Resistance 
that had been dying down in the other’s eyes. 

“You mean I kicked him,” flashed John Blunt grimly. 
“Yes, I kicked him. I kicked Major Dalbignac when he 
richly deserved it. ” 

Lord Hillyard turned suddenly white. 

Then he leaped upon the other with a fury that few 
would have believed him capable of. 

“You kicked him — and you’re proud of it! A man 
of your age, behaves as few boys would behave, and 
swaggers about it! You call yourself educated; you 
believe in Socialism and Law; and yet give way to your 
unbridled passions! You pose as a leader of democracy 
and conduct yourself like a hooligan! You commit a 
common assault upon a man and instead of being ashamed 
of yourself, instead of offering an apology, you justify 
yourself. Mr. Blunt, you’re contemptible. ” 

John Blunt turned his back, as it were, upon the storm, 
and met it with a kind of sullen school-boy defiance. 

“What d’you propose to do?” he asked doggedly. 

“What do we propose to do?” cried the little peer, 
flaming still. “ You ask us, do you? I answer; What 
reparation d’you propose to make?” 

John Blunt said nothing. 

He stood sheepishly against the wall. 

The few necessary words fluttered up on ghostly wings 
from the deeps of his heart, flapped at his lips, and re- 
fused to pass their portals. 

He would utter them and could not. 

The stubborn School-boy prevailed in him to his con- 
scious shame. 


282 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


He mouthed and blinked and remained miserably, 
ignominiously, mute — and had missed his chance. 

Dalbignac took a pace forward. 

“I’ll tell you what I mean to do, Mr. Blunt,” he said. 
“ I mean to do — nothing. And my action or inaction is 
not inspired by generosity, or Christian meekness, or 
any nonsense of that sort: it’s just that I am, I confess, 
an ambitious man. I have, I believe, I hope, a career 
before me, and at this stage in my career I can’t afford 
to make myself ridiculous in the eyes of the world. You’re 
a clever man, and an absolutely unscrupulous one — as 
you’ve shown to-day. And you’re a power in the Radi- 
cal Press. And I don’t doubt that if I prosecuted you, 
what with dirty dodges, and your own unexampled 
capacity for lying, somehow or other you’d trick me. 
You tremble, I see: I’m not going to prosecute you — 
don’t be afraid! For if I did take action against you, I 
don’t doubt you’d make political capital out of the mat- 
ter, on the lying lines you’ve suggested to-day, and twist 
it to help in the agitation against the Dukes and the House 
of Lords that you and your party are at present waging.” 

“Hear, hear!” said Lord Hillyard. 

“I leave the matter as it stands,” continued the other. 
“You have assaulted me, and I’ve done nothing. Now 
you’ll be able to stand on Radical platforms all over the 
country and buck to your Socialist friends of how you 
kicked an officer of the Guards and he took it — like a 
lamb .” He slammed his fist into his open palm. 

John Blunt, gray as flint, sweated against the wall. He 
was in the wrong, and was far too sincere a man not 
admit as much to himself. His moment of weak pride 


JOHN BLUNT, SCHOOL-BOY 283 

had given his enemies their opening and he must now 
endure the punishment they meted out to him. When 
they had finished — if they ever did; when they had fin- 
ished, he would, he would . . .•> 

“In Germany,” continued the other, “where men 
may still be men I should have been compelled to call 
you out to defend my honour; or rather, as it would 
not be lawful for a man of my class to fight with a man of 
yours, it would have been my privilege to horsewhip 
you. Fifty years ago in England I could have put things 
right between us without a scandal and making myself 
ridiculous. Those days are gone by, and bitterly some 
of us regret them. ” 

“Hear, hear!” said Lord Hillyard. 

“Fifty years ago no Englishman would have dreamed 
of striking a man in the back when both his hands were 
engaged. ” 

John Blunt gurgled in his beard. 

He flung out his hands and dropped them instantly. 
“Nobody expects you to be a gentleman,” continued 
the Guardsman, “but when first I met you I thought 
you were a man. Now I know you for a hound , and 
an incredibly mean sort of hound. You struck me 

deliberately knowing I wouldn’t strike you back ” 

“It’s a lie,” stammered the other, but his words were 
drowned beneath the torrent of the other’s rage. 

“ I’ve lived a dozen years in the Army, where I suppose 
you might expect to find violence if anywhere; and though 
I won’t say I haven’t known last-joined subalterns be- 
have to each other much as you’ve done to me, never 
— never in the whole course of my service — have I 


284 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


known a man of your age deliberately assault another, 
and then refuse to apologize.” 

He slashed his lavender coloured gloves across the 
palm of his hand. 

“And now, Mr. Blunt, good day. It is to you, and to 
the men like you, that the England of our day is being 
handed over. And what I say is — God help our poor 
country!” 

His voice trembled and thrilled. There was a power, 
a moral passion about the man, that was as strange to 
him as it was impressive. For once George Dalbignac 
looked not merely handsome but almost great. 

He walked out. 

Lord Hillyard lingered a moment. 

“I endorse every word that has fallen from the lips of 
my friend,” he said with extraordinary dignity. “Mr. 
Blunt, you’re a cad.” 

Lord Hillyard lingered a moment. 

He followed the other. 

John Blunt, leaning against the wall, shut his eyes and 
coughed. 

Then he tottered to the door. 

“Dalbignac!” he called hoarsely. 

The tall soldier was strolling down the road, and he 
was laughing. 


XL 


JOHN BLUNT BOWS HIS HEAD 

Rachel was standing by the wall at the bend of the 
river, while Lady Florence visited in the cottage opposite. 

A tall, gray-headed figure was coming down the hill 
toward her. There was something high and something 
humble about the man as he came. His head was lifted 
and a hallowed calm, white as a winter dawn, had settled 
on his face. He walked as one who goes not ungladly to 
his death. 

The girl saw him and turned her back. She looked 
at the river sweeping and shining beneath her. The 
colour had left her face, and once she bit her lip and 
swallowed. 

The feet of the man sounded in the road behind her. 
He was coming up to her, and she trembled. Then the 
feet sounded no more. 

“Lady Rachel, ” said a voice so subdued that she hardly 
recognized it. 

She did not turn. 

He came up beside her. Her face was resting on her 
hand to hide the fact that she was on the brink of tears. 

“I know about it,” she said, dull and cold and dead. 

“He told you?” 

She stamped her foot. 


285 


286 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“No, he did not tell me. He told Lord Hillyard, who 
told my cousin, who told me. ” 

There was silence. Then he said huskily, 

“What d’you think of me?” 

She turned on him, flashing like the river. He had 
not known she could look like that. 

“I did think of you as something simple, big, and 
strong — something natural like a great tree — some- 
thing I hadn’t met before — a real man at last. Now 
I know you’re not like that.” She gurgled sobs. “It’s 
always happening, and it’s so disappointing. You meet 
some one you think’s splendid, and then — you find 
out.” The tears gushed forth and ran down to join 
the river. “I know it’s my own fault — I expect too 
much. I run headlong — then tumble on my nose. 
It’s a lesson for me. ” 

He hung a moment over her with haggard eyes. 

“I agree with you,” he said quietly, lifted his hand, 
and padded on his way. 

She watched him go, gray-headed and humble, then 
plunged after him. 

“Rachel!” called a sharp voice. 

She turned to find her cousin waiting for her. 

John Blunt turned in at the great gates of the Hall 
and padded solemnly up the drive, the sun flickering on 
his gray head through the beech leaves. 

The saint with the amused eyes came to the door and 
looked more amused than ever at the shaggy, sombre 
figure standing with something of the attitude of a wan- 
dering friar in the porch. 


JOHN BLUNT BOWS HIS HEAD 


287 


“Is Major Dalbignac in, Gregory ?” 

“I’ll see, sir.” 

“Ask him if he’ll see me?” 

In a minute or two the saint returned. He walked 
swiftly with downward eyes. There was something 
furtive about him and he halted at a respectful distance 
to give his message. 

“The answer is no, sir.” 

John Blunt turned slowly about and watched two robins 
fighting on the green bank opposite. 

Then he said, “Thank you,” and went down the 
steps. 

In the drive he met the two ladies. 

Lady Florence passed him as if he had been a 
tree. 

She had deep-ingrained in her blood that hatred of 
lawlessness which a class whose personal interests have 
been for centuries associated with the keeping of the Law 
must feel. 

Rachel’s eyes fluttered for a second about his face like 
a pair of homing swallows fluttering at the mouth of their 
nest; and there was in them a wistful tenderness almost 
mother-like. 

Had he given her a chance, she would have acknowl- 
edged him. 

But he did not, and she dropped her eyes. 

He padded solemnly past them, with his head down, 
and a sad and beautiful dignity about his face. 

On the landing the girl met Major Dalbignac. 

“Has Mr. Blunt been up here?” she asked with eager 
anxious eyes. 


288 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

He threw up his handsome head in that peculiar way 
of his. 

“I haven’t seen him,” he said. 

In his room John Blunt sat down and wrote swiftly. 
Dear Dalbignac: 

I agree with everything that you and Lord Hillyard said this 
morning. 

You were absolutely right and I was absolutely wrong. 

To you I offer the only reparation in my power for the as- 
sault I committed on you yesterday — my — he 'paused with 
set face — abject — he brooded over the word with gloomy brows — 
apology. 

To you and to Lord Hillyard I express my regret for my 
conduct of this morning. 

Pray do not judge my party by so unworthy a member of it 
as 

Yours faithfully, 
John Blunt. 

You are at liberty to publish this letter or make any use of 
it you may choose. 

He blotted it fiercely, and re-read it. The word 
abject he erased with savagery, and after a second de- 
liberately rewrote it. 

Then he stamped the envelope and ran out with it. 

An elderly lady at the pillar box was startled by a gray- 
haired man who thundered up, shoved her out of the way, 
and flicked a letter into the slit with a fierce, 

“Go, and be hanged to you!” 


JOHN BLUNT BOWS HIS HEAD 


289 


Then he tried to recover it, thrusting his hand into the 
opening. He danced on his toes, while his tongue played 
about his lips. He hammered at the pillar box with 
his knuckles, and shouted, biting his nails, 

“Gone, by gosh!” 

Then he leaned up against the wall and roared with 
laughter. 


XLI 


THE LAST OF LADY RACHEL 

Next morning as John Blunt stood in the door of his 
cottage, a great two-horse bus clap-clapped slowly by. 

There was a pile of luggage on the roof; Kitson was 
sitting beside the coachman; and within were Rachel 
and Major Dalbignac. 

The two were sitting opposite each other, their heads 
close together. 

The girl’s back was to John Blunt, and he could see 
from her shoulders and the toss of her head that she was 
laughing. 

Major Dalbignac showed his fine teeth, threw back his 
handsome head, and ha-ha’d. The green hat with the 
feather in it was thrust rakishly back, exposing his beauti- 
ful white brow. He was as always very much at his 
ease. 

Then his eye caught John Blunt’s. The light and 
laughter passed out of his face. 

He deliberately looked away, and then continued to 
laugh with Rachel. 

The train was very late. 

Major Dalbignac and Rachel walked up and down the 
little bare platform, while Kitson stood by a small stack 
of luggage. 


290 


THE LAST OF LADY RACHEL 


291 


Dalbignac lifted his head and saw a bare-headed man 
leaning over the railway bridge looking down at them. 

“Let’s see. Your carriage’ll be at the other end,” he 
said and turned about. 

They walked quietly down the platform, the tall lilt- 
ing Guardsman humming musically and the girl in the 
flowing dust cloak at his side. 

“Hullo! What’s this?” cried Dalbignac. 

A yellow mongrel came limping down the line toward 
them. It was very thin and hung a damaged paw. It 
looked up in the faces of the two upon the platform above 
it and came to them cringing and with obsequious eyes, 
its tail tucked and tentative. 

“It’s hurt,” cried the girl. “Look at its paw.” 

“Miserable looking little beast,” said Dalbignac, eye- 
ing it critically. 

“Do take it up!” cried the girl anxiously. “It’ll 
be run over else. ” 

The Major hitched his trousers, dropped on one elegant 
knee, and dived for the little dog in the six-foot way 
beneath. 

It dropped beneath his hand, but he caught it by the 
scruff of its neck, and plucked it up. 

The girl held out her arms for it. It lay in her bosom, 
reaching for her chin. 

“Look at its poor paw,” murmured the girl. “It’s 
been in a trap. ” 

“Got the mange more like,” said the Major, dusting 
his fine hands scrupulously. 

“Look, Kitson!” cried the girl, seeking sympathy. 
“What shall I do with it?” 


292 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“Yes, my lady,” said the maid severely. “A very 
dirty little dog indeed, and all against your nice frock. 
I should send it to the chemist. ” 

“Perhaps this chap’ll know something about it,” said 
the Major. 

He strolled across to the signalman’s box and called 
up in the easy familiar way thajt made him beloved of his 
men: 

“I say! D’you know anything about this little yellow 
tyke?” 

The man shook his head. 

“Nay. A saw un coomin doon t’line. He’s been 
poachin’ belike and got catch’d. ” 

Dalbignac next asked a porter, with the same result. 

“Turn it out in the road,” suggested the Major. “I 
expect it belongs to one of those houses up there by the 
Railway Arms. ” 

He took it from the girl, mildly reluctant to let it go, 
and dropped it over the palings into the road. 

It sniffed through them at the girl within and 
whined. 

“It wants to come back to me,” cried the girl, and she 
passed through the gate into the road. 

The little mongrel limped to her, wagging shamefacedly, 
and lay down at her feet. 

She gathered it in her arms again. 

“It looks to me,” she said anxiously. “What shall I 
do with it? Oh, here’s the train! I can’t very well 
take it to the Glenattocks. ” 

“You must trust me with it, ” said the Major gallantly. 

He handed her into the train. 


THE LAST OF LADY RACHEL 


293 


“Will you?” said the girl. “And if it doesn’t get bet- 
ter, happy-release it, please. I’ll pay.” 

“Very well,” he laughed. “Hope it won’t come to 
that.” 

The man on the bridge saw the girl lean out of the 
carriage and wave as the train drew out of the station. 

The Guardsman stood with lifted hat on the platform, 
his stick through the collar of the straining dog. 

They were not a well-matched pair, the damaged 
mongrel and this man with his thoroughbred air and con- 
summate clothes. A little knot of working-men drinking 
outside the Railway Arms grinned as the tall soldier 
passed them, the little yellow dog hopping three-legged at 
his side. 

Dalbignac saw the grin and answered it. 

“Do any of you fellers know anything about this 
tyke?” he asked, pausing. 

They shook their heads. 

“A niver seen un afoor,” said one. 

“And A don’t care if A never see un again,” chimed 
in a wag. 

There was a roar of laughter in which Dalbignac 
joined heartily. 

“Well, d’you want a nice dog, any of you?” 

The wag, warmed by success, took up the question. 

“Will he fetch sheep and cattle?” he asked. 

“Yes, he’s good for all that. Tackle a bull, if you 
like. Just your sort, he is. Wonderful well-bred dog 
too.” 

The wag shook his head. 

“He’s far ower good for ma work, A reck’n,” he said, 


294 TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 

and the Major passed on laughing himself amid shouts of 
laughter. 

Outside the school by the church he found some school- 
children and asked them if they knew the dog and its 
owner. 

One little boy thought the dog belonged to yon man. 
He pointed to a cart a few yards down the road. 

As Dalbignac neared it, the cart moved on. 

The soldier broke into an easy run. 

“Come along, little chap,” he called; and the mongrel 
hopped along merrily on three legs, grinning up into his 
new friend’s eyes. 

This was a nice Two-Legs, strong, and true, and 
faithful! 

At a cottage the baker’s cart stopped. 

The Major caught it up. 

“Is this dog yours?” he asked the man. 

The fellow shook his head. 

“D’you know whose it is?” 

“Might be Wilson’s?” 

“Wilson’s! Wilson’s! — I expect there are a dozen 
Wilsons in this parish. Which d’you mean?” 

The young man shook his head. 

“Couldna say.” 

The Guardsman gave an impatient click. 

“Oh, what’s the good of you?” he said, half irritable 
and half laughing, and passed on down the road, which 
ran deserted before him. 

On the left there was a stone stile opening on to a 
field path. 

The Major halted at it and looked back. 


THE LAST OF LADY RACHEL 


295 


Across the road was a farm yard. In it a litter of little 
pigs, pink with black spots and crisp-curled tails, squealed 
and scampered. The yellow mongrel peered at them 
through the gate and wagged. He would like to play 
with those little piggy-wiggies. They stared back at 
him, their flap ears forward. The yellow mongrel yapped 
an invitation. They took fright and charged away at a 
jerky gallop their short fore legs stiff, their ears flapping, 
and tails tight over their backs. 

Smiling to himself, the little dog turned. 

The road was empty. The tall Two-Legs, whom he 
had thought his friend, was gone. 

He put his nose down anxiously and hunted to the stile. 

It was of stone and very high. 

He could not see over it, could not climb it on three 
legs, could not see the tall Two-Legs swinging swiftly 
along the field path, the tall Two-Legs whom he had 
thought his friend. 

He stood on three legs in the road, and flinging his 
head high, wailed to the heavens that had forsaken him. 

Desolate as only a lost dog can look, he gazed up and 
down the road. 

Then his ears cocked. 

A tall Two-Legs was coming toward him from the 
puff -place where the kind One-Legged One had been. 

Was this his friend? 

He set off toward him, cringing and uncertain. 

It was not the same Two-Legs, but he smelled good 
— better than the old one; smelt of earth and water 
and the homely natural things with which the simple 
soul of the yellow mongrel was familiar. 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“Hullo, little un,” said a deep sardonic voice. “Man- 
aged to lose you already, has he?” 

Half an hour later Major Dalbignac and Lord 
Hillyard were walking through the village when they 
met John Blunt, a three-legged mongrel limping before 
him. 

Major Dalbignac saw the dog and his eyes sharpened. 
The dog saw Major Dalbignac and limped toward him, 
wagging and well pleased. 

“Get out!” snapped the Major. 

He left his companion and crossed the road. 

“Mr. Blunt,” he said with quiet urbanity, “I accept 
your apology,” and passed on. 

“I hope you shook hands with him, Dalbignac,” 
said the little peer, as the other rejoined him. 

The Guardsman shrugged. 

“Oh, but you should have done,” said Lord Hillyard 
reprovingly. 

The other laughed and shrugged. 

“ Moi, je n’en vois pas la nScessitS .” 

Major Dalbignac was fond of airing his French — too 
fond his brother officers said. 

Lord Hillyard’s cheek was warm, and there was a flash 
in his eye as he muttered the one word, 

“Un-English.” 

In spite of all his superficial faults. Lord Hillyard was a 
gentleman at heart, and Dalbignac’s omission rankled 
in the little man’s generous mind. 

“He should have shaken hands with him,” he said to 


THE LAST OF LADY RACHEL 297 

Lady Florence, as he rehearsed the incident. “So un- 
English. ” 

“Of course he should,” said Lady Florence. “Es- 
pecially as the man wrote a very handsome apology. ” 

“Oh, he showed it you, did he?” said Lord Hilly ard, 
somewhat aggrieved. “He didn’t show it me.” 

The autumn lady dropped on her knees to poke the 
fire and hide the fine colour in her cheek. 

That morning she had committed the one ungentle- 
manlv action of her life. Going into the smoking room 
she had seen a letter lying on the table and recognizing 
the hand as John Blunt’s had read it. 

“You know, Bobo, he is not absolutely straight, George 
Dalbignac,” she continued between set teeth. “Of 
course his mother was half French. That accounts for 
a good deal. But I must say I do like a man to be 
straight. ” 





BOOK VI 


THE RETURN OF THE WOMAN 


t 


299 





















XLII 


THE AUTUMN LADY 

The autumn lady was walking up the bridle lane 
toward the church in the fields. 

Her knitting was in her hand, and Mac swagged along 
at her heels. 

The church bell was clanging, its dull metallic note 
chiming in with the noise of outgoing rooks. 

There were two churches at Scar; the church on the 
hill and the church in the fields. The former was 
the parish church, the latter the appanage and pri- 
vate chapel of the Brackenhursts, with a chaplain of its 
own. 

Lady Florence was only churchy in so far as she was 
conservative. Of parsons she had no high opinion; 
much church teaching her sensible spirit condemned 
shortly as trash; but she believed in the Church as a 
pillar of the State and a bulwark standing between the 
country and the bottomless abyss of Radicalism. It was 
by her orders that a service was held every morning in the 
church in the fields. No soul had ever been known to 
attend it except herself, and she went rarely, and then 
more to catch out old Crossthwaite the chaplain than in 
search of spiritual edification. 

A practical soul, enamoured of order, since she did the 
301 


302 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


ordering, it was a passion with her to keep everybody 
and everything up to the mark, parsons included. 

On reaching the church she left Mac among the tomb- 
stones, scanned inquisitorially the notices in the porch, 
and passed on into the gloom of the aisle. 

As she entered the old man in white in the chancel 
began to drone. 

Lady Florence took her place in the front pew. 

By making the responses in a sharp and aggressive 
voice, she hoped to brace the comatose old fellow. 

Once he paused and cocked a rheumy eye at her as 
much as to say : 

“Brawling in the congregation is an indictable offence. ” 

Lady Florence rapped the desk imperiously, like a 
teacher calling for order in an unruly class. 

The old man with an audible grunt resumed his droning. 

The service over at last. Lady Florence waited impa- 
tiently in the church-yard for the other to join her. He 
came at last reluctantly, a little dried up peasant of a 
parson pottering along with a wintry grin upon his un- 
shorn and hoary face. 

“What a time you’ve been, Mr. Crossthwaite ! ” she 
cried sharply, and speaking rather loudly. “I thought 
you were never coming.” 

“I’ve got nothing I want to say to ye,” squeaked the 
old fellow. 

“But I’ve got a good deal I want to say to you,” 
retorted the lady. 

“Ah!” said the old man. “Is that yer dog ratten 
and scratten among my graves? G-r-r-r!” 

“Mac, come here!” called the lady. “Here are the 


THE AUTUMN LADY 


303 


hymns for Sunday, Mr. Crossthwaite. ” She gave him 
a paper. “And mind you stick to the ones I give you 
— I won’t have your nasty low dissenting chapel trash. 
This is a church, the House of God, and a place of Wor- 
ship. It isn’t Little Bethel. And I see Lord George’s 
brass is in a scandalous condition — scandalous ;” She 
was shouting in the old man’s ear. 

He stood unmoved, watching Mac among the tomb- 
stones with grim and expectant eye. Suddenly he 
tossed forward, put his hand to his mouth, and rapped 
the ground with his stick. 

Lady Florence turned away, flashing scorn. 

“You’re more like a yokel than a parson!” she 
muttered, the battle light struggling with the laughter 
in her eyes. 

The old beast! — how dared he? 

Taking up her knitting, she crossed the corn field strewn 
with shocks, and struck the bridle-lane again. 

There was something noble, motherly, and gracious 
about her, as she sauntered down the steep lane at the 
tail of the little hairy old dog who was all the child she 
knew. 

She suited her pace to his, and there was a lovely twi- 
light in her eyes as they dwelt on the shaggy gray back 
thumping massively along beneath her. 

Sometimes she murmured tenderly, 

“Mac, old boy!” 

Then he wagged back at her, but thumped on down the 
steep, too intent on the business of walking, veteran that 
he was, to turn to the kind eyes shining down on him. 


304 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


Once, engaged in her knitting, she nearly trod on him. 

“Oh, I beg your pardon, dear man!” she cried, 
saving herself and him. 

Those who denied charm to Lady Florence had but to 
see her with this old child of hers to be undeceived. 

A beautiful woman just past her prime, she harmonized 
nobly with the trees touched to autumn and the ripening 
fruits of wood and hedge-row. Nature clearly had meant 
her for a mother. Her plain shirt showed the form and 
comely lines of the bosom to which no babe had clung. 
Her short skirt revealed strong ankles and sensibly shod 
feet that should have chased fugitive little ones, screaming 
laughter as they fled. And her hair, severely neat and 
already graying, added a mourning touch to remind 
Nature of her loss. 

She dropped down the bridle-lane between deep banks 
crested with bracken and bound with the roots of over^. 
hanging beech. 

It was very quiet in the still noonday. Bed beasts 
grazed on the banks of the stream beneath. Under the 
trees the dew was still heavy on bracken and herbage, 
while in the hedge beside her she could hear the patter- 
ing feet of pheasants. 

The bridle-lane ran steeply under beech and oak and 
spruce fir. Beneath the trees water trickled down the 
lane and made it shine. The autumn lady picked her 
way carefully through the mud at the heels of Mac, 
knitting as she went; eye and ear alert for the life of the 
wood. A blackbird flew out of the heart of a great alder, 
shrieking. In the red fir above her, two chaffinches 


THE AUTUMN LADY 


305 


pinked. Close beside her, a brace of young pheasants 
fluttered up, whirred away out of the wood, cocketting 
loudly, and floated down on wide brown wings to the 
rushes by the stream. 

A broken foxglove hanging a solitary bell on the bank 
caught her eye. She bent and tilted it. A little brown 
bee emerged, buzzing. The autumn lady peeped into 
the bell, and admired the hairs on the pouting lower 
lip, the blanched shell, and the golden organs on the long- 
stalked stamen. 

The flower reminded her of Rachel. She had found one 
such solitary bell in the girl’s room; and something 
Rachel had said to her of male and female came back 
to her — she couldn’t remember what. 

She eyed the plant sharply, as if suspecting it of some 
indecency. 

Male and female! That child! How girls did talk 
nowadays ! 

Her thoughts revolved round Rachel. 

She reviewed the events of the last few weeks with a 
satisfaction she felt strangely half-hearted in spite of 
herself. 

But for her, indeed, the child would have run her skiff 
on to the rocks. It had been a near thing; certainly 
John Blunt would never have done. She was sure he 
would never have done. He was altogether too, too . . . 

Yet she was not without her compunctions. On 
Sunday to her surprise the man had come to church 
and even stayed for the Sacrament, slouching up to the 
altar last and alone in a sloppy old blue serge suit in 
which he looked curiously homely and even loveable. 


306 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


An Ishmaelitish air about him had touched her heart 
and given her a passing pang. 

Yet she was right. She was sure she was right. It 
could never have done. The man was quite too . 

But Rachel had been fond of him. She had seen it 
in the girl’s eyes as they kissed good-bye. There was 
pain in them — such pain as Lady Florence had not 
liked to see; a sweet, enduring look, as of one who has 
played her game, and lost, and does not care to try again. 

She had known that look in the eyes of women before. 
It was the look of the girl of Rachel’s age, unmarried 
after many seasons, who says: 

“I’ve found at last — and lost. I shan’t seek again.” 

Long ago — how long ago! — there had been that 
look in her own eyes. 

A sudden horror seized Lady Florence lest this girl 
she loved should now enter the long gray valley she had 
been trudging down for the last quarter of a century. 

She walked briskly as though to shake off her doubts. 

Yet she was right. She was sure she was right. The 
man was unthinkable, but — he was a man. He was 
straight and he was simple, and Hilary liked him. But 
for that miserable business of the picnic . . . 

There came surging up out of her memory the occasion 
on which she had marched out to meet him as an enemy 
and had found in him a friend. 

She could see him now, as he walked up the drive be- 
side her with slow plodding feet and downward eyes; 
and she could feel him still as suddenly he lifted her out 
of herself into the Great Country that lay deep and still 
and wonderful behind the veil of every day; the country 


THE AUTUMN LADY 


307 


in which men spoke to women eye to eye, and soul to 
soul; where Love was and Truth and Innocence that knew 
no shame. 

That day there had been something Big about the man 
— Big and Beautiful. 

And she remembered with a thrill the words he had 
then spoken, clear words, calm words, unaccustomed 
words, that came welling up out of the deeps of his great 
simple soul. . . . 

I should like to see her a mother , and her reply, or 
rather her Heart’s reply : for it was not herself, but Some 
One infinitely greater, Some One within her, remote and 
mysterious, who had dared to whisper the intimate and 
tender truth never utterd of her before, hardly admitted 
even to herself, a dim need, a sense of loss, a mute con- 
tinuing misery of discontent rather than a conscious pain, 
summed up in those strange sub-conscious words — 

I miss mine so. 

Lady Florence stopped dead, and asked herself with a 
gasp — Had Rachel minded it all too? And if so was 
she responsible? 

She passed on her way down the shining track. 

The trees opened before her. The bridle-lane crossed 
a moss-eaten old bridge over the Wart and ran up to a 
gate that opened into the pleasure-gardens of the Hall. 

Mac rolled on to the bridge, halted on the rise of it, 
and began to thunder, bristling. 

The autumn lady called him to her and leashed him. 

Across the bridge a young hare lay panting in the flinty 
path, its white under-fur dabbled with blood, and body 


308 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


faintly twitching. Clearly the Great Bowman had 
dealt it a death wound in the Wilderness, and it had crept 
out here to die. 

A man bent over it. Lady Florence knew well those 
darned gray breeches, loose and buckled beneath the knee, 
those great scraggy shins, and huge, broad-toed boots. 

It was John Blunt. 

At his feet a yellow mongrel stretched with tentative 
nose and furious stump, asking to be allowed to worry 
the dying creature. 

The Man stood as a God between Nature and her prey. 

“Get out!” he said, and smacked the yellow mongrel 
away. 

Then he took the hare in his arms, tender as a woman, 
and in the silence she could hear him mother-murmuring 
in its ear. It lay against his breast, hugged close, and 
with blinking eyes. He bent his head, and Lady Florence 
could have sworn he kissed the dying thing. 

The yellow mongrel danced on his hind legs at his mas- 
ter’s feet and whined pitifully to be allowed his fun. 

John Blunt kicked him ruthlessly away. 

Then he knelt and laid the hare on the ground, where it 
still twitched spasmodically, blinking up a black eye at 
him. 

“There’s nothing to fear, little ’un,” he murmured 
gently, and grasped a flint. 

One swift blow did the work and the wounded creature 
twitched no more. 

The God-Man had torn away the cloud of pain 
that darkened its eyes and opened for it the Gate of 
Happiness. 


THE AUTUMN LADY 


309 


He took the limp creature now at peace and laid it 
gently in the covert beside the path. Then gathering 
bracken he strewed it over the body with the touching 
reverence of a child. 

Lady Florence turned away; and the tears were in 
her eyes. 


XLIII 


A CONVERSION 

A yellow mongrel pawed at the windows of the 
drawing room of the Hall. 

Within stood John Blunt, humming to himself. 

His hair was still rough from his morning’s bathe and 
his hands behind him as he stared at an engraving of 
Watts’s picture of “Love and Life.” The great brown 
figure, strong as earth, helping the white flame-like maiden 
up the eternal hill, held his gaze. 

He shook his head. 

“T’ other way,” he grunted. “Watts had no imag- 
ination.” 

A woman entered quickly and stood in the door. 

He turned and looked at her. A gleam of surprise, 
pleasure, and recognition, stole across his face. 

“Hullo!” he muttered in deep low voice, his face 
glowing, and marched toward her with both hands out 
and a rarely beautiful smile playing about his eyes. 

It was as though suddenly in a strange country he had 
come across an old friend. 

The woman said nothing. 

She stood in the door like a school-girl who has repented 
and come to tell her mother so. Her shoulders were 
slack, her head drooped like a birch tree after rain, there 
310 


A CONVERSION 311 

was something suppliant even about the long arms hang- 
ing at her side. 

Taking both his offered hands, she stood before him, 
her eyes down, abashed as any girl. 

The clouds had lifted, the clouds that had stood for 
long between the sun and herself, and now that sun shone 
through in pale and misty splendour. There was a lift 
and glow about her face as upon an April evening after 
showers. She had bathed in the great deeps and come 
forth purged of all grossness and pure as a frosty dawn. 
The scales had fallen. She saw the old with new eyes 
and had been transfigured by that vision splendid. 
Florence Brackenhurst had experienced that blessed and 
beautiful change of heart, and eyes, and understand- 
ing, that some call conversion. 

He stood above her, this great natural man, her hands in 
his, looking down on her with kind eyes. 

There was no triumph in his face, only noble friend- 
ship and understanding. 

“Will you forgive me?” she muttered with downward 
eyes. 

The touch of remorse, of meekness, of gaucherie was 
wonderfully becoming to the gray beauty of this middle- 
aged and masterful woman. 

The colour heightened in the other’s cheek. He looked 
shamefaced and shy, and his eyes softened. 

“It’s been as much my fault as yours and probably 
more,” he said in stumbling voice. “I’m like that, I 
know. I provoke people to run up against me. I 
don’t mean to, but I do. I resist them in my mind, and 
they feel it, and resist me back. And then we clash.” 


312 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


His eyes twinkled. “I wasn’t kicked enough at school. 
That’s about the long and short of it. You see I was 
always the stronger . . .” He laughed. “I’ve never 

been at home in civilization from childhood. When 
I was a young man I bolted to South Africa to get away 
from it all. I loathe clothes of any kind. For twenty 
years I was in the wilds, living naturally amongst niggers 
and wild beasts, and though I’ve been at home all these 
years, I still feel like a rhinoceros in a drawing room. ” 

“Let me go now,” she murmured. 

He obeyed. 

She sat beneath him with bowed head, her eyes on her 
hands, and her hands in her lap. 

He bent forward and kissed her hand. 

She did not lift her eyes, but a faint colour stirred her 
cheek. 

“It’s all right now,” he said tenderly. 

“Yes, it’s all right now,” she answered. 

Then she raised her eyes; and she was smiling the deep 
mysterious smile of lovers, little children, and those who 
have entered into the Kingdom of Christ. 

“What d ’you want?” she asked. 

He sat down on a low chair at her feet. 

“I want her address,” he said, quiet as herself, and 
added as an after thought, “please.” 

Her eyes dwelt on his; and they were as tranquil and 
as true as the voice that asked him, 

“Are you in love with her?” 

The two who had been splashing noisily for so long in 
the shallows, were swimming now together side by side 
in the great deeps, where was no noise, or fuss, or foam 


A CONVERSION 313 

— only a strong and silent tide sweeping them forward 
almost unconsciously. 

Class, convention, all those little barriers that finite 
man builds, and until he attains his majority must still 
build about his earth to the seeming detriment of his 
spirit, were down at last. 

Together they entered on the Kingdom of Heaven which 
was within them. 

John Blunt twiddled a blade of grass in his hand. 

She watched his face, that strange twilight glimmer on 
her own. 

“I want her,” he said at last, very low. “That’s all 
I know.” 

Her bosom rose and fell evenly as one who sleeps. 

“I daresay a good many women have wanted you.” 

He shook his massive head. 

“No,” he said, “because I haven’t wanted them. I 
do now though. I want her. She has made me want 
her. I can’t do without her. ” 

There was a silence, and she took up her work. 

“How old are you?” 

“Fifty odd.” 

She began to knit. 

“She’s twenty odd.” 

John Blunt twiddled his blade. 

“I can’t help it,” he said solemnly. 

“Her income’s about twenty thousand pounds a year.” 

“I know,” grumbled the other. “We shall have 
enough between us.” 

She peeped at him shyly, a beautiful smile harbouring 
in her eyes. 


314 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


His head was down, and she could see the gray hair 
growing thin on the top of it. 

He stared down at the floor between his great boots. 
His throat and nose were working. 

A sudden look of alarm possessed the autumn lady’s 
face. She tightened, and her eyes grew sharp. 

“Don’t spit on my carpet!” she squealed. 

“All right,” said John Blunt testily. “All right,” 
and with his foot rubbed the floor. 

Then they both smiled. 

They had come down from the heights and were 
back once more on the plains of common sense and every- 
day — but with what a difference from when they were 
last there ! 

She was brusque, bracing, sisterly, friend talking 
to friend, equal to equal, as she took up the 
conversation. 

“She’s at the Glenattocks, in Perthshire.” 

“ Glenattock ! ” mused John Blunt. “Who may 
he be? Oh, I know — that beast of a lord who 
turned out two hundred crofters to make a deer 
forest. ” 

“Yes, that was the version of the Radical papers. 
We won’t go into that just now,” said Lady Florence, 
setting her teeth. “What shall you do? Go and stop 
with the Glenattocks?” 

“Don’t know ’em,” said John Blunt gloomily. 

“I didn’t think that would make any difference to 
2/cm,” retorted the lady delicately. 

“And don’t want to,” muttered the other. 

“Major Dalbignac’s going up there to-day,” continued 


A CONVERSION 315 

her ladyship, bright and spiteful, as she flashed her 
needles. 

John Blunt said nothing, blinking, gloomy, and sombre. 
“The address is Pentlands, Dumfries, ,, said the autumn 
lady relenting. “ The Lady Rachel Carmelite. The I 
Remember, The," 


XLIV 


LORD HILLYARD COMES ROUND 

A tear was rolling down the autumn lady’s nose as 
she entered the smoking room half an hour later. 

There a white waistcoat bulged in the most comfortable 
chair before the fire. Behind it Lord Hillyard slept, 
the Times spread on his knees, and his feet on the couch. 

Lady Florence bent above him, knitting. Her eyes 
dwelt on the crisp pink face crumpled and pouting so 
close to her own; and in them there was a mothering 
tenderness, breathing and beautiful. 

“Dear little man,” she whispered, and her lips brushed 
the other’s forehead. 

He stirred querulously. 

“Oh, Annie, get out!” he muttered, and pushed an 
imaginary somebody away. 

She gathered herself. 

“How you do love stuffiness, Hilary!” she called 
briskly. 

He woke in a flurry. 

“Oh, is that you, Florence? I thought you were — I 
— I’ve — I’ve been waiting for you to take me out. ” 

“I can’t take you and Mac out together,” said the 
autumn lady. “You quarrel so. He’s had his turn. 
Now it’s yours. Run and get your little hat.” 

316 


LORD HILLYARD COMES ROUND 317 

They walked together under beeches above the river. 
At the wicket-gate they paused and gazed down at the 
village. 

John Blunt was plodding along the road, a yellow 
mongrel at his heels. 

Lady Florence pointed him out to her companion. 

“I see,” he answered shortly. 

She edged up to him, knitting tactfully. 

“Bobo, will you help those two young people?” she 
asked. “It’s the real thing all right.” 

Lord Hillyard’s lips puckered. His little face became 
stiff and stubborn as a naughty child’s. 

“Impossible, Florence,” he said. “Not a pretence!” 

The autumn lady threaded her arm through his. 

“He’s rough, but he’ll polish,” she said, and her 
voice deepened. “We’ve missed our ship, Bobo. We 
don’t want them to miss theirs.” 

The little man dropped his eyes and drank in the voice 
so close to his own. 

Then he lifted his face. It was no longer stubborn: 
it was prim. 

“He is not one of us, my deah,” he said. 

The lady withdrew her arm. 

“Things are not quite so bad as I thought,” she 
replied grimly. “I looked him out in ‘Who’s Who’ 
the other day. He’s a grandson of old Sir Thomas 
Blunt — the Peninsular man, you know. And his 
mother was the daughter of — somebody — I forget 
the name at the moment. Somebody one knows some- 
thing about. Not Foljambe!” 

“But what a liar the man is!” cried Lord Hilly ard. 


318 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“He told me his mother was middle class and his father 
was a doctor. ” 

“So he was; but it wasn’t a pill doctor,” said the lady 
soothingly. “It was a Latin and Greek doctor from 
Oxford. And there’s a difference ! ” 

“There’s all the difference in the world,” cried Lord 
Hillyard cheerfully. “All the difference between M. D. 
and LL.D. One man writes the prescriptions in Latin 
— an honourable and a learned task; and the other 
makes ’em up and administers ’em by the ounce, so I 
understand. ” He rubbed his little hands together cosily. 
“This quite alters the case, my deah. Why wasn’t I 
told before, I wondah?” 


XLV 


MAJUBA ONCE MORE 

That afternoon John Blunt stuffed his coat into his 
knapsack, and stalked forth, blue-shirted. Bees buzzed 
in the fuchsia drooping at the gate, and Tramp, the yellow 
mongrel, limped joyously beside him. 

The afternoon was fair and misty, and there was a 
touch of autumn in it. A golden stubble on his right 
shone in the sun against a gray fleece of clouds, quiet on 
the horizon, On the bank the sorrel showed rusty; an 
occasional dingy bramble blossom still bloomed amidst 
unripe fruit; and here and there a few belated harebells 
hung blue heads and trembled. 

In the farm upon the left the men had been working 
Sunday and week day to lead in the harvest. Now 
it was garnered. Comely stacks rose round the 
yards; and all was quiet save for a white-faced foal 
poking a downy nose over a door and whinnying for 
its dam. 

John Blunt plodded down the road toward the sea 
his knapsack on his back, and the milk in his bottle slop- 
ping noisily. 

A school bell was ringing, and he passed a group of 
white-aproned maidens with robin-brown hair, who 
curtseyed to him. 


319 


320 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


In their midst was a little dumpling mite with broad- 
blown, apple-blossom face whom he recognized at 
once. 

“Are you the child the lady gave chocolate to?” he 
asked severely. 

The solid man and stolid child looked at each 
other. 

Both seemed displeased with what they saw, for both 
averted their gaze. 

“The lady gave her some chocolate and us all,” said 
one of the little girls. 

“You mustn’t ask,” said John Blunt sternly. 

He searched in his knapsack and found a solitary stick 
of chocolate. 

“Here you are,” he said in solemn and rather surly 
voice. 

The child grabbed at the silver-wrapped bar, and 
thrust it into her mouth without a word. 

John Blunt shook his head with grave disapproval. 

In John Blunt’s opinion the manners of Young England 
were deplorable — deplorable. 

“You should say thank you and please,” he said, and 
trudged upon his way. 

A little distance down the road he turned. The 
children were gathered round the dumpling mite. 

“It’s for the child alone,” he called. 

The eldest girl, her hair touched to glory, and brass- 
tipped clogs shining in the sun, looked up at him 
coldly. 

“We were only taking the paper off for her, sir,” she 
said with quiet dignity. 


MAJUBA ONCE MORE 


321 


“Oh/’ grumbled John Blunt and plodded on his way, 
a suggestion of added stubbornness about his back. 

A scrawl of Virginia creeper ran red over the wall 
and roof of the church perched above the road, as he 
came to it. 

At the lych-gate he halted and looked back. The road 
was empty save for a fowl which pecked and scratched. 
He entered the church-yard a thought stealthily. The 
gravel spoke beneath his feet, and he took to the silent 
grass border. 

The little church stood before him, a wave of lobelia 
breaking blue about its foundation. The door was open. 
John Blunt stood in the porch and read the notices. 
Then he glanced sharply about him. No one was by. 
Only a robin sang briskly in the thorn across the road. 
He could go in without compromising his character. 

Wary, yet a thought defiant, he entered the church, 
and took his seat in the corner where he had sat on his 
first Sunday and gazed at a mist of forget-me-nots 
floating across a thicket of heads. 

A long while he sat there with folded arms and gazed 
toward the front pew before the lectern. Flies buzzed 
about him; the robin sang without; and a cock crowed 
persistently. At last he rose, walked slowly up the aisle, 
entered the front pew, and took his seat in the centre of it. 

Then he heard a noise behind him, and turned sharply, 
his grim brows gathered. 

It was only the robin that had entered and now perched 
upon the font, while Tramp peeped inquisitively round the 
door. 


322 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


John Blunt kicked a red stool, knelt down on it, his 
chin on the book-rest in front, and stared hard at the 
black and red tiles of the floor. Some words he had 
learnt in his childhood emerged in his mind. They 
seemed appropriate to the occasion and he repeated 
them. 

Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock 
and it shall be opened to you. 

Rising slowly he marched down the aisle, said a word to 
the robin, bright-eyed and attentive on the font, dipped 
his finger in the water, tasted it, shook his head, and wrote 
with wet finger on the stone, 

This water is muck. Filter it, 

and left the church, twinkling. 

Then he took the road toward the sand-hills and the 
sea, the yellow mongrel joining him. 

As he walked on down the road toward the railway 
bridge, there was a great calm about his face. 

A boy was leading a sweating mare into a field upon his 
right. A whinnying foal trotted up and thrusting his 
muzzle between his dam’s thighs began to suck. 

John Blunt could see the little creature’s white face 
tilted and tenderly milking lips. 

“You oughtn’t to work that mare in that condition,” 
he called. “Bad for her; bad for the foal; and bad for 
you. Take the larger view, boy. Think of the future. ” 

Now he climbed the railway -bridge and looked over the 


MAJUBA ONCE MORE 


323 


parapet toward the sand-hills and flat-topped Majuba, 
the last of them. 

Beyond the shining estuary Dark Coombe lifted in 
mist, and behind him tumbled the mountains, dim save 
for the Scaur on the broad back of which the sun lay white 
as snow. 

A train came rumbling toward him round the bay, 
jetting smoke against the hill. It did not stop at the 
station but rattled on beneath the bridge, belching clouds 
about him. He crossed to the other parapet and followed 
its tail swinging Scotlandward along the edge of the 
sea, till he could see it no farther. 

Then he walked on down the lane past James Rigg’s 
old white-washed farm, one tiny leaded pane in each 
window open, and the hollyhocks standing tall about 
the door. 

He passed through the gate at the end of the lane into 
the no-man’s land beyond. 

The sun had gone in, and the sea glimmered silvery 
in mist. 

Sea gulls speckled the sand-hills, gray and rank around 
him, as he marched down the rough track to the shore. 

The sea was out and the sand ran bare and brown along 
the foot of the sand-hills. Crossing the shingle, he stood 
on the shining and naked waste and stared across the 
dim waters Scotlandward. 

Then he turned and made for Majuba and the estuary. 

The shore was deserted, but a chain of dark dots led 
across the sand. Some girl clearly had walked that way 
before him. Her toes were rather pointed, and her heels 


324 , 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


made a deep indent at each stride. John Blunt gave his 
knapsack a hitch, and began to follow faithfully the little 
feet winding in and out among the patches of shingle, the 
yellow mongrel scouting before him. 

He was humming as he walked. In a stretch of shingle 
black upon the brown, the little feet lost themselves, and 
John Blunt marched on alone, silent now. 

The sun, dim in mist, made silver pools upon the sea, as 
he tramped gravely along. The gray sand gnats bounced 
at his feet, and a little company of sand-pipers skirmished 
silvery before him. A host of oyster catchers, black as 
mussels, sat along the edge of the sea at their eternal vigil 
and rose at his coming with whistling cry and a whir of 
myriad-flashing wings to skate away over shining waters. 

The sun now peered through the mist, and lay broad 
and bronzed upon the waters. The sky was a pale misty 
blue, and the sands stretched away in shining reaches of 
pearl and opal to the estuary. 

Upon his left ran the sand-hills, low and pale, the rush 
grass upon them wind-blown and shaggy as a mane. 

There was not a soul in sight. Even the sea birds had 
been left behind. A dead fish, fly-haunted; a half-buried 
lobster pot; and myriad ghostly broad-arrows imprinted 
in the sand, were his only companions. There was no 
sound save for the noise of his own feet. 

Yet he was not lonely to-day. Some One was with him 
all the time. Some One! 

The little hill rose now before him, a green-crested 
Sphinx, facing seaward, and guarding the estuary. 

He halted at its base, saluting it. 

“Majoopa,” he said softly, and his eyes smiled. 


MAJUBA ONCE MORE 


3 25 


There was something of the virago about the storm- 
blown beauty and dishevelled locks of the fierce little 
fortress hill that guarded the mouth of the estuary, 
Dark Coombe looming dim behind. 

The sand flowed smooth and brown about its base, 
like the trailing skirts of a giantess. 

The flowing skirts were beautifully ridged by the wind 
as John Blunt waded up them. 

He climbed hardly, gripping the withered rush grass 
that here and there bound the steep sides. Tramp panting 
up behind him. Once he slithered to the bottom in a 
storm of dust, only to climb again. 

At last he found himself upon the summit, the grass 
to his knees and very prickly. 

Beneath him lay the sand-hills tumbled and tufted, 
and at his back the estuary thrust into the flank of the 
land like a shining spear blade. 

He sat down in the tiny hollow where he had sat with 
Rachel on that first Sunday and drank his milk. 

Then he rose and looked about him. 

His head was in the heavens, and he stood up there, 
lofty and alone, gazing seaward. 

The sun was white as silver. The bronze on the water 
had dimmed, and the sea darkened. The wind blew 
on his wet back. Over the mud-flats of the estuary the 
sea gulls screamed and floated, and, behind, dim clouds 
lost themselves in dim hills. 

He gazed north to where on a clear day the hills of 
Scotland might be seen lifting across the shining Solway. 

To-day they were invisible. 

He walked to the very brink of the hill and stood there 


326 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


blue-shirted in the evening, the wind in his hair, and 
sinking sun on a level with his eyes. 

Then he placed his hands to his lips trumpet-wise and 
sent his voice resounding across sand-hills and sea — 

“ Rachel r 

A girl, lying beside her lover among the tufted sand- 
hills, turned at the cry. 

She saw the wild-haired figure standing at the edge 
of the steep above her. 

“Oh!” she cried, for the man against the sky-line 
had given a stumble forward. 

His arms flung upward and he fell in a hurricane of 
dust that whirled about his tumbling figure, while a 
little dog on the crest of the hill threw up his head and 
yapped. 

Then the dust settled, and a dark form lay still at the 
foot of Majuba. 


XL VI 


HARRY REPORTS 

A man and woman sat at supper. 

It had taken three maids the best part of two hours 
to prepare the meal; it was taking two grown men to 
serve it; and it would take four of the five of them another 
hour to clear it away. 

Lady Florence was fond of saying she liked her simple 
chop and couldn’t abide city feasts. Herself indeed she 
lived homely as a cottage woman. A bun, a cup of tea, 
an egg or two, and a milk pudding, satisfied all her needs. 
' It was not what she ate that made the fuss; it was the 
Aura of Unreality in which it was necessary to shroud 
herself and her food that she might conceal from 
her dependents and still more from her own heart 
the fact that she was in truth much the same as they 
were. 

Her Aura of Unreality was to this very real woman 
what his shell is to the snail. Therefore she guarded it 
with passionate jealousy. Once it went, she knew with- 
out knowing it that all she believed she cared for most 
would go too. She would cease to be an aristocrat and 
stand forth naked and exposed — a woman. 

Yet Lady Florence possessed in a marked degree that 
sentimental hankering after simplicity and affectation 
327 


328 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


of it, which is the sign and attribute of the older members 
of an artificial class. 

To simplify was the passion of her life; and she kept 
a host of servants to help her to attain her end. 

This splendid woman, sound alike in limb and heart, 
designed it would seem to run admirably and alone a 
cottage, half a dozen roaring brats, and a grimy arti- 
san, had twenty to thirty men and maids, indoors and 
out, to stand between her and the simplicity which was 
her aim. 

So a man whose ideal in life it is to go naked may 
pile on the clothes in order to achieve his end, satisfied 
if he can keep his little finger bare to brandish in the face 
of the world and wag before his own complacent eyes. 

The irony of her position never troubled Lady Florence. 
A conventional mind, conservative as a machine, she was 
satisfied that this was the station of life to which it had 
pleased God to call her. It was her plain duty to herself, 
to Society, and to Him to maintain herself in the position 
in which he had placed her. In a word she preferred 
the catechism to Christ, although she by no means 
knew it. 

For she worshipped the Simple Man in sincerity and 
truth. She prayed to him as regularly as she brushed 
her teeth and in much the same businesslike and matter- 
of-fact manner; stating her wants in the plainest terms, 
and showing some temper if they were not straightway 
satisfied. 

The Simple Man was her God. She loved to shroud 
him in the Aura of Unreality which he had spent his life 
dispersing — the Aura, greatly glorified, in which she her- 


HARRY REPORTS 


329 


self lived. Did any challenge his divinity she was shocked 
to the roots of her established soul. The one harsh and 
tyrannous act of her long rule had been the evicting of a 
journeyman cobbler who had preached at the pump that 
the Simple Man stood for simplicity; that he was Man, his 
rule of life to be followed faithfully by his brother-men; 
and his plain teaching as to Property, the true teaching. 

On hearing of it, she had denounced the doctrine of 
the heretic as cheek and blasphemy, and marching down 
to the village had sacked Martin herself. 

The act was typical alike of her magnanimity and her 
pettiness. She devolved her dirty work upon no under- 
ling: she did it herself. The onus of her actions, just or 
unjust, she would bear on her own broad shoulders. With 
all her limitations, there was no shuffling or shirking about 
Lady Florence. Brave as a lion, and as brutal, she had 
faced her victim with flaming eyes. 

“I suppose you think you know more about it than 
the bishop?” she had snorted with the savage insolence 
that was natural to her when roused. 

The quiet gray-headed fellow, standing aproned and 
grimy in the dusk of the cottage where his children had 
been born, had answered with the mild stubbornness of 
a certain kind of fanatic, 

“I ken Christ, my lady. I have Him in ma heart; and 
His word in ma hand. If thy palace-living bishop and 
ma Christ canna coom to terms, I ken well which I’ll 
follow.” And he had gone out into the world of rain 
and wind with his wife and children — to follow the 
Light, as he understood it. 

It was twenty years ago now, but Lady Florence re- 


330 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


membered it still of stormy nights, and would creep to 
the window and peep out over the rain-thrashed earth 
and see again a man, a woman, and a perambulator 
taking the brown road that led to God knew where, 
as she had seen them on that dark November morn- 
ing long since. 

And as she grew older that sight haunted her 

always more. 

% 

Lady Florence and Lord Hillyard dined. 

A little oval table stood up island-like in an ocean of 
shining floor. It was white as a snow mountain, frostily 
beautiful with silver, icy with cut glass, and rich of the 
tropics with fruit and flowers. 

A shaded lamp threw a soft light on the hands and arms 
of the man and woman who sat at it. 

Two shadowy spirits moved in the dusk behind. 

There was about the lofty room that aping of the 
spaciousness and dignity of nature, that simplicity in 
sumptuousness, so dear to an aristocracy securely es- 
tablished yesterday upon a money basis and resolute to 
distinguish itself from the aristocracy established to-day 
on the same basis. 

As Lord Hillyard and Lady Florence lingered over 
their dessert, Gregory, whose pleasant duty it was to 
retail the village gossip to her ladyship, entered and 
announced that there had been another mountain-climb- 
ing accident. 

“Indeed,” said Lady Florence, cutting grapes. “A 
tourist, I hope; and not anybody from the village.” 


HARRY REPORTS 


331 


“It’s that gentleman like, my lady,” said the saint 
with the amused eyes. 

“What gentleman?” sharply. “Not Mr. Blunt?” 

“Yes, my lady.” 

Lady Florence dropped her grapes. The colour left 
her face, and she rose to her feet. 

“Very distressing,” said Lord Hillyard, continuing to 
peel a peach with daintiest precision. “Have you the 
sugah?” 

Lady Florence turned sharply to the butler. 

“When did it happen?” 

“This afternoon, my lady, I understand.” 

“But why wasn’t I told before?” asked Lady Florence, 
rounding on him. “My instructions are that every- 
thing that happens in the village is to be told to me 
first of all. Surely you ought to know that by this time, 
Gregory.” She spoke with acrid emphasis, punctuating 
every word. 

The saint with the amused eyes looked saintly almost 
to sanctimoniousness. 

“Harry’s only just come in, my lady.” 

“And what’s it got to do with Harry, if you 
please?” 

Lady Florence looked rather splendid in her anger. 

“Harry picked him up in the station cart, my lady.” 

“This is very intahresting, ” interposed the prosperous 
little voice of Lord Hillyard. “I understand from 
Gregory that Harry is stationed at the foot of the moun- 
tain to pick up the bits of those who fall. Very 
thoughtful of you, Florence. Who shall deny that there 
is virtue in aristocracy, after all?” 


332 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


Lady Florence turned on him sharply. She could see 
nothing but a shining bald pate bowed over a peach. 

“Where is Harry ?” 

“In the pantry, my lady.” 

“Send him into the drawing room at once.” 

She rose with a cold glance at the rosy pate across 
the table. 

“I’ll leave you to your food, Hilary,” she said. 

“Thank you, my deah,” said the unrepentant little 
man. “ It is extremely good. ” 

The dapper little cockney groom in tight trousers and 
high collar stood very much at his ease in the great 
drawing room and told his story. 

“Why, my lady, I was driving back with the station 
cart from Rigg, when I came on the gentleman walking 
along the road. ” 

“He could walk then?” 

“Oh, yes, my lady. Walk, my lady. Only walking 
very old. And there was a young man and a young 
woman like with him and a little dog. And he was cov- 
ered with blood and muck.” He liked the phrase and 
repeated it — “blood and muck, my lady.” 

Lady Florence, standing by the fire, winced. 

“Well?” 

“I offers him a lift, my lady.” 

“Quite right, Harry.” 

“And he climb up into the cart very old. Seem very 
shook up like — almost not quite himself, so to speak. ” 

“Did he say anything?” 

“Oh, yes, my lady — quite chattery. He says: 


HARRY REPORTS 


333 


T been mounting-climbing and I tumble off,’ he says. 
‘You’re a horsey man, I see,’ he says — ‘probably a 
lord by the look on you. So you’ll understand all about 
it. The mounting skip like a ram and chuck me off,’ 
he says. ‘And that’s all I know about it: so for heaven’s 
sake ’old yer tongue.’ And after that he never said 
another word. So I drove him up the cottage, and 
he got down very old. 

“ ‘Shall I fetch a doctor, sir?’ says I. 

“ ‘Doctor be damned,’ says he, and walks in.” 

“And was that all he said?” asked Lady Florence. 

The little groom sniffed and twisted his cap. 

“No, my lady, that wasn’t all he said. ” 

“I mean, of course,” said Lady Florence sharply, 
“things that it’s fit for me to hear and you to tell 
me.” 

The little groom touched his forehead. 

“Quite so, my lady. As he was just going in, he turn. 
‘Wait a sec,’ he says. ‘I suppose you want ’alf a 
crown for this trip,’ he says.” The little groom snorted. I 
“So I just touch me ’at and I says, ‘I only take money 
off of gentry ,’ I says. ‘As to Sowcialists and such,’ 

I says, ‘ they take money off of me — or would if they 
could. Thank you all the same,’ says I. And I whip 
up and came away. ” 

Lady Florence dropped her eyes. 

“You shouldn’t have said that, Harry,” she said 
gravely. 

The little groom’s eyes were flashing. 

“No, my lady, nor he shouldn’t have said what he 
said. Only I know he don’t know no better. ” 


334 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


Lord Hillyard had come into the room and heard the 
end of the story. 

Lady Florence turned to him. 

“Hilary, I must go and see to Mr. Blunt.” 

Lord Hillyard paddled to the window and peeped out, 
his white waistcoat before him and his hands at his back. 

“Impossible, my dear Florence, it’s raining cats and 
dogs. ” 

“No, I must go. He’s got no one there — only that 
wretched woman. You know what men are when they’ve 
got nobody to see to them.” 

“We are reckless creatchahs,” said Lord Hillyard, 
back by the fire. “But in this case your solicitude 
seems uncalled for. The man could walk and talk and 
be very rude and quite himself. He’s a bit shaken 
up, I dare say; jbut he’s not hurt. It’s ridiculous to 
make a fuss.” 

“I can’t help it,” said Lady Florence. “I must go. 
I feel myself responsible to Rachel. It’s only a mile.” 

She went out into the hall. Lord Hillyard paddled 
after her disconsolately. 

“It’s pouring,” he said. “Your rheumatism.” 

Lady Florence was throwing a cape about her head 
and shoulders. 

Lord Hillyard saw it and sighed. He went to a bell, 
rang it and sat down. 

“Take off that cape, Florence,” he said. “Gregory, 
where’s Corrie?” — Corrie was the little man’s valet. 
“I shall want my comfortah, my umbrellah, my gaitahs, 
my sou-westah, my aquah-scutum, my watahproof, 
and possibly some wadahs. ” 


XLVII 


LORD HILLYARD PLAYS THE GOOD SAMARITAN 

It was a warm night. 

Hannah Fell snored in the rocking-chair before the 
fire, Pip on her knees. 

She wore only a dingy white body and short stuff 
petticoat that revealed her sturdy, gray-stockinged legs 
and feet encased in clogs. 

Her thick arms and shoulders were bare, and her 
massive bosom, barely veiled, rose and fell rhythmically. 
Her head heaved regularly with the heaving of the fat 
shoulder on which it had fallen, and now and then she 
grunted like an animal who dreams. 

A voice penetrated to her remote soul. Her brow 
wrinkled, and she tried to bar it out. In vain. It 
thrust hardly beneath the tight-closed lids of her heavy 
flesh as the beak of a sea bird thrusts between the shell 
of a reluctant mussel, laying bare the soft body within. 

She opened dull eyes and glared sullenly across the 
room. 

A fat bundle of clothes stood in the door on two black 
stumps rooted in goloshes. At the top of the clothes 
was a layer of white comforter, and from the comforter 
emerged a bald and shining head. A plump hand 
rapped a dripping umbrella on the floor, and a pair of 
335 


336 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


gold-rimmed pince-nez, rain-bedewed, glinted in the 
light. There was a look of mild surprise amounting al- 
most to indignation about the pink and puckered face 
behind the pince-nez. 

“Wake up, woman, wake up!” came a slow and 
slightly irritated voice. “ I want to know how is — ah — 
Mr. Blunt?” 

“Sore and fratchy,” growled the woman. 

“He’s had an accident, I understand?” 

“Aye; he’s broke ma bottle to bits.” 

She pointed to the fragments of a broken bottle on the 
dresser. 

“Has he broken himself?” asked Lord Hillyard in his 
precise and pompous way. “That’s what I want to 
know. ” 

“Best go and see,” she answered. 

“You don’t seem to know much about him,” said 
Lord Hillyard reprovingly. “Where is he?” 

“Oop in t’attic. Through yon door. There’s a 
candle to thy hand. ” 

Lord Hillyard bundled up the stairs with gasps, the 
candle swaling. 

At the top he tumbled against a door and knocked. 

The only answer was a sharp bark, then low growl- 
ings. There was a great draught up there and outside 
the wind moaned. 

He knocked again. 

“May I come in?” he asked and thrust the door 
against the wind. 

As he entered the candle nearly blew out, and the 
door shut with a bang behind him. 


PLAYS THE GOOD SAMARITAN 


337 


The room was in darkness and bare as a tomb. In 
the far wall was a low arched window, wide open, the 
rain spluttering through it. A trunk stood on the bare 
boards in one corner. To it a yellow mongrel with a 
bandaged paw was tied, which rose, growled, and glared 
with cairngorm eyes. 

Beneath the slope of the roof was a bed, and from it 
a deep voice grumbled, 

“Shut up, Tramp.” 

The yellow mongrel lay down with glowing eyes. 

Lord Hilly ard approached the bed, his candle high. 

John Blunt lay stripped to the waist, his great boots 
on the counterpane, and long gray legs crossed. 

“I’m very sorry to see you like this, Mr. Blunt,” said 
the little lord kindly. “How are you?” 

“I’m all right,” a remote voice answered. 

“But I don’t think you are at all all right,” said the 
kindly lord in his slow and pompous way. “Why are 
you like this? Have you seen a doctor? Why is the 
window open and the rain cornin’ in? What was it hap- 
pened?” 

John Blunt answered slowly. 

“The thing gave way under me. . . I suppose I 

fell ... I don’t remember much . . . They 

helped me home . . . And there was a bottle in 

my knapsack broke and cut my back a bit . . . I’m 

all right.” 

Lord Hillyard moved about the room, and the yellow 
mongrel growled. 

John Blunt cursed the dog from the bed. 

“Does he bite?” asked Lord Hillyard. 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


33 & 

“He tries,” said John Blunt, “but he doesn’t often 
succeed. He’s bitten her once and had a scrap or two 
with the cat. He thinks he’s looking after me. ” 

Lord Hillyard shut the window, took up a shirt that 
lay blood-daubed on the trunk, and dropped it with a 
grunt. 

“But what’s the woman been about to leave you like 
this? Is she a Christian? Is she in her senses? I 
shall certainly report her to Lady Florence. It’s mon- 
strous. Has she brought you nothing to eat?” 

“It wasn’t the woman’s fault,” replied John Blunt. 
“She did come messing about; but I told her to go to 
blazes, and Tramp went for her. ” 

Lord Hillyard put his hand on the other’s bare chest. 

“You’ve got no temperatchah. You must have some- 
thing to eat at once. I’ll go and see to it myself. Mean- 
while you get into bed. I’ll leave you the candle. ” 

He bundled away down the stairs. 

In five minutes he was back, breathing hard, and bear- 
ing a tray with a glass of hot milk and some boiled eggs. 

John Blunt now sat on the edge of the bed, staring list- 
lessly before him, his hair wild, and face a thought 
ghastly in the flickering candle-light. 

“I’ve brought you some hot milk and boiled eggs,” 
said Lord Hillyard. “And I spoke to her very sevyahly 
— very sevyahly indeed. I said I should report her to 
her ladyship; and she began a long story about you and 
the cat and the dog. ” 

John Blunt rose to his feet, wavered, and sat down 
abruptly. 

“Drink the milk first,” ordered Lord Hillyard. 


PLAYS THE GOOD SAMARITAN 339 

The other obeyed and the colour came back into his 
face. 

“Now I’ll take off your boots, ” said the little peer. 

Lord Hillyard of Hillyard went down on his knees. 
His shirt front bulged and the diamond in it flashed in 
the candle-light. His plump white hands played about 
John Blunt’s greasy black boots; they stripped the 
stockings full of sand off the other’s great shanks, and 
pulled down his knickers. 

It was good of Lord Hillyard and good for him. Indeed 
there were few happier men on earth at that moment 
than the little peer. His face gleamed and glowed. A 
great content filled him. He was as near purring as a 
man can be. 

The nurse, the mother, and the Good Samaritan, who 
are in every man, since he is in his essence Love, were 
finding rare outlet for themselves in simple and beauti- 
ful service for a brother man. 

Lord Hillyard went to the chest of drawers. 

“Would you like to brush your teeth?” he asked. 

“No, thank you,” said John Blunt, meekly. 

“Well, it won’t matter for once, I dare say, ’’chirped 
Lord Hillyard comfortably. “Now I just want to see 
the wound in your back. ” 

He took the candle, and lifted the other’s shirt. 

“Oh, that’s nothing,” he said cosily. “That’s all 
right. There’s a long red scratch — that’s all. It’s bled 
a lot, but it’s entirely superficial. . . . Now get 

into bed and I’ll tuck you up. ” 

John Blunt obeyed with grim submissiveness, and lay 
with tangled gray head, while the other tucked him. 


340 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“You’ve made a fine mess of the woman’s counterpane 
with your boots,” said Lord Hillyard. “And I’m glad. ” 

“So’m I,” said John Blunt. 

Lord Hillyard smiled above him approvingly, his little 
face pink and puckered. 

“You’re getting bettah, ” he said. “Now I’m going 
to take one of these blankets off. It’s a warm night 
and you won’t want more than one. I’ll put it here, so 
that you can throw it on, should it get chilly in the night. 
Then I’ll leave the candle here beside you, and say good 
night. ” 

He put a chair at the bedside and arranged a candle 
on it, bustling about the room, as happy and fussy as 
a child nursing a sick doll. 

And as he bustled he kept up a little chirping. 

“I’m afraid I shan’t see you in the morning as I’m 
off by the ten train, but I shall hope to hear good accounts 
of you from Lady Florence. You’ve had a nasty shock 
— that’s all. I’m not uneasy about you — not at all. 
You’ll need a day or two’s quiet, and then you’ll be all. 
right. . . . Good-night, Mr. Blunt, and good-bye.” 

A great hand crept out from under the sheets and 
gripped his. 

“Good night, Mr. Hillyard,” said John Blunt, still 
somewhat dim. He held the other’s hand and looked 
at him. “My income’s about three hundred pounds a 
year plus what I earn. ” 

Lord Hillyard looked somewhat puzzled. Then he 
laid his hand on the other’s forehead. 

“Quite so, quite so,” he said soothingly. “You’ll 
be quite yourself in the morning, you’ll see. You’ve 


PLAYS THE GOOD SAMARITAN 


341 


had a nasty shock — a very nasty shock. I should have 
a doctor — just to overhaul you. Good-night, Mr. Blunt, 
good-night. I shall leave a crack of window open, be- 
cause it’s more hygienic. There, that’ll do. Good- 
night, little bow-wow. Look after him well. There, 
he’s wagging! Good-bye, Mr. Blunt. I’m not at all 
uneasy about you — not at all. ” 

Half an hour later he was saying to Lady Florence as 
he divested himself of his outer layers. 

“He’s quite all right, my deah; but I think he’s had 
a slight touch of concussion. He seems a bit blurred. 
But I’m not uneasy about him — not at all. ” 

Lady Florence sat down at her desk. 

“I must write and tell Rachel,” she said. 


XL VIII 


TWO WOMEN 

The carriage that took Lord Hillyard to the station 
next day dropped Lady Florence at the door of Wart 
cottage. 

The little plump man sat in the carriage with pursed 
lips and puckered eyes; save for his white waistcoat not 
unlike a cock-robin. 

“Good-bye, Florence, ,, he said. “I may give your 
deah love to my Annie ?” 

The autumn lady looked away, and her eyelids were 
down. There was something shy, subdued, almost sullen 
about her as she answered, 

“Good-bye.” 

The carriage drove off, a white waistcoat visible through 
the window and a pair of bright little eyes shining behind 
gold-rimmed pince-nez. 

The expression in Lady Florence’s face changed and 
hardened. 

She entered the cottage without knocking, formidable 
now, in short skirt, leather bound, and stout shoes, and 
marched straight on into the kitchen. 

Hannah Fell, who was kneading bread, put down her 
roller, and dropped a stubborn curtsey. 

342 


TWO WOMEN 


343 


The eyes of the two women met and clashed. 

Then the surly, bunchy peasant woman in her clogs 
and dingy disarray dropped her eyes before the challeng- 
ing gaze of the battling and beautiful lady, neat-shod 
and shivering by the door. 

Lady Florence’s eyes rained down flashing blows on 
the other, who seemed to cower as beneath a storm of 
hail. 

She snatched up her cat, as though fearing lest this 
panther foe should dart forth a sudden paw and strike 
her through her darling, and hugged him to her massive 
bosom. 

Her hand tickled her cat’s head, and she hissed and 
smiled. 

The lady, surging by the door, suddenly towered, 
toppled, and broke about her enemy in a torrent and 
spray of fierce white words. 

“I wouldn’t treat a dog so,” she ended, heaving. 

The other stood before the onslaught, stubborn and 
stiff as a rock wave-sluiced. 

“He was stark,” she mumbled sullenly. “And he 
set tyke on ma Pip. ” 

“Stark!” flashed the lady. “Fiddle! You might be 
a girl the way you talk — and you, who’ ve been a mother.” 

Hannah Fell lifted her eyes. The light seemed to 
well up from within them as they met the other’s with 
caressing insolence. 

“Aye, A’ve had a man-child by ma man,” she said 
slowly. “A’ve known the sweetness o’givin’ suck to the 
ba’rn A’ve borne to the man that was mine.” Her 
lips were firmly set. She spoke slowly with a massive 


344 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


solemnity that was not without a certain dignity . ‘ * Aye, ’ ’ 
she continued, dropping her sledge hammer words one by 
one, her mighty bosom high, “A dared. ‘ Damn them 
all for thy sake , lad/ says I. ‘ A will. 9 And A did. 
And A’m glad. ” 

The eyes of the lady listening were dark as her face was 
white. Her lips parted and her teeth showed set be- 
tween them. She drew her breath with a gasp, and stared 
at the floor as one about to fall. 

“How dare you?” she panted. “How dare you?” 

Hannah Fell buried her lips in her darling’s fur and 
blew on it, watching the waves she made billow in ruf- 
fling flood across the cat’s gray back. 

“He was oot again last neet,” she tittered. “He’s 
a rare un’s, ma Pip. ” 

She raised her head. “He’s not claimed, see thou — 
like me and thee. ” 

She lifted eyes that simmered insolently. 

The lady snorted, stamped, and passed out, white as 
foam. 

Slowly she dragged up the attic stairs, and stood outside 
the door. 

It was a quarter of an hour before she was composed 
enough to knock. 

There was no answer but a bark. 

“ May I come in? ” she asked, her voice still uncertain, 
and entered, heaving gently. 

John Blunt lay in bed, his shirt open at the chest, 
writing a note. 

J3he stood above him. 


TWO WOMEN 345 

“Well, Man,” she said gently, “how are you this 
morning?” 

“I’m all right,” said John Blunt. He looked at her 
with kind and sombre eyes, and resumed his writing. 

She watched him not without amusement, touched 
with tenderness. Save for a certain wildness of hair, 
and a darkness beneath the eyes, he seemed very much 
himself. 

She laid her cool large hand on his forehead. He paid 
no heed, writing unconcernedly. 

“Oh, there’s not much the matter with you,” she said 
cheerfully, and going to the window flung it wide. 

The colour came back to her cheek and her bosom 
steadied as she gazed on the earth beneath. Its calm- 
ness entered into her spirit. Her eyes lost their sparkle. 

Tramp, tied to the trunk, squirmed at her feet. 

She patted him. 

“Yes, my dear, I’ll take you for a few minutes’ 
run,” she said. “And you shall have a go at her cat on 
the way.” 

He had finished his writing when she returned. 

She sat down on his bed. 

“What’s to be done for the poor thing?” she asked 
in her friendly, half-chaffing way. 

He lifted eyes that smiled shyly like a boy’s. 

“Post this for him.” He handed her the note he had 
been writing. “You can read it if you like.” 

Then a panic of shyness seized him. He reached forth 
a hairy great hand and clutched for his treasure. 

She whisked away to the window. 

“No,” he whimpered. 


346 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“Yes,” she cried, reading. 

The card was to The Lady Rachel Carmelite, Pent- 
lands, Dumfries, and ran — 

A Little Boy, 

Called Jacky Blunt 
111 in bed. 

Without his nanny. 

Wants you, please. 

The autumn lady rang out peals of whole-hearted 
girlish laughter. 

“She’ll come,” she cried, tossing to and fro. “She’ll 
come. ” 

He lay like a great, gray-bearded baby, sulky and 
ashamed. 

“Beast!” he muttered. 

“Why, he’s blushing!” cried the lady, rocking to 
and fro. “Ha! ha! It’s too good.” 

John Blunt retired beneath the sheet. 

“I hate you!” came a smothered voice from the deeps. 

It was some time before the lady resumed her nat- 
ural self. 

The tears were still in her eyes as she buttoned the 
shirt over the other’s chest and felt his pulse, and the 
impish spirit of fourteen still danced and twinkled in her 
heart. 

“Little Boy’s well enough to move,” she said, her 
voice uncertain. “I’m going to take him up to the 
Hall to nurse him. ” 

John Blunt glared and freed his wrist. 

“Get out!” he growled. “Wish I hadn’t trusted 
you! Course you can’t understand. ” •* 


TWO WOMEN 


347 


The dancing elves in the lady’s heart died suddenly. 

“I’ll come in the pony cart for you; and they can bring 
your traps later,” she said soberly. 

“No, I’ll walk.” 

“You’ll do nothing of the sort.” 

“All right then,” said John Blunt. “All right,” and 
threw a bare foot out of the bed. 

Lady Florence smacked it briskly. 

“ Put it back ! ” she ordered. “ Remember I’m a woman 
if I’m an old one. I haven’t packed you yet. ” 

Down on her knees she packed him, and packed him 
well, sharply criticizing his clothes, as her large and 
beautiful hands folded, tucked, and pressed. 

“These things are in rags. You’ll have to get some 
new ones this winter. This won’t stand another patch. 
Bless the man ! Look at his socks ! I see that I and my 
maids shall have our hands full for the next few days.” 

Her work done, she came to him where he lay and 
watched him with grim amusement. 

“And now can you get yourself up?” 

“I can get up if you’ll get out,” said John Blunt, still 
ruffled. 

“What about this wound in your back?” 

“Well, what about it?” 

“I want to see it. ” 

“Oh, get out!” sullenly. 

“My dear boy,” said Lady Florence/ 4 d’you think I’ve 
been head nurse in the parish for thirty years to be scared 
by a scratch? Come! No nonsense.” 

He submitted. 

“Oh, that’s all right,” she said. “You needn’t call 


348 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


in old Sparrow. Besides, he doesn’t know as much as 
I do. I brought some strapping, and now I’m going to 
put it on. There! It’ll take some getting off . ” 

An hour later she sat in her pony cart at the gate. 

John Blunt came out of the cottage, tall and gray and 
rather tottery, Tramp beneath his arm. 

Hannah Fell stood in the dark of the passage behind 
him, her eyes glowing, and Pip in her arms. 

John Blunt turned and held out his hand. 

“Good-bye, missus,” he said. “Forgive and forget. 
Six o’ one and half a dozen o’ the other. And God bless 
us both, say I. ” 

The woman lifted her smooth brown face to his. There 
was triumph in it, and shame. Her eyes were dark and 
dazzling, and her lips trembled. 

“Thou wast far ower fond o’ ma Pip,” she mumbled. 
“That’s why,” and peeped at him like a child over the 
cat’s gray back. 

He patted her shoulder. 

“We were far ower like, I reckon,” he laughed. 
“That’s why, more like. Too much original sin about 
us both,” and he climbed into the little cart. 

“She’s a queer woman,” said Lady Florence, flicking 
furry little Absolom into a waddling trot. “There was 
a child once there shouldn’t have been. The father was 
a gentleman — of a kind, I believe. Then things went 
wrong, and the child died, and the man left her, and she 
went off her balance. And then the cat came, and she 
thinks the cat’s her lover or her child come back to her 


TWO WOMEN 


349 


— I forget which. Mr. Lloyd knows the whole story. ” 
She looked away. “I suppose I ought to have shunted 
her at the beginning, but her father was my father’s 
shepherd for seventy years, and his father and grand- 
father before him.” 

The lady jobbed Absolom’s mouth. 

“And as it happens we were born and baptized on the 
same day. So she was my sort of village twin, d’you 
see? I know it’s no excuse; but these things do make a 
difference. ” 

“Of course they do,” said John Blunt gruffly. 

“And she used to have my old clothes and toys when 
I was a girl,” continued the lady. “Not my dolls.” 
She laughed awkwardly. “I loved them too much. I’ve 
got them still in the nursery — Dolly and Oily and Molly 

— and I go up and play with them sometimes on wet 
days when nobody’s there. ” 

He looked up at her. She threw a rainy eye at him, 
wistful and smiling. And for the first time John Blunt 
recognized how beautiful this woman was, and sus- 
pected dimly something of her tragedy. 

His companion seemed to feel his thought, for the 
colour flecked her cheek. 

“And — I don’t know — I’d a sort of feeling for 
her somehow, ” she ended quietly. 

“I don’t wonder,” said John Blunt, and felt dimly 
that he had said the wrong thing. 

Turning awkwardly, he looked back at the strange 
dark woman who still stood before her gate, the sunshine 
in her eyes, her cat in her arms, gazing down the road 
after him; that peasant soul, garbed in its brown and not 


350 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


uncomely habit of flesh, a grande amoureuse in clogs and 
uncouth speech of the blood royal of Helen and Heloise, 
who had risked all for love’s sake and never regretted. 

“She knew all about it,” he said deeply. “That 
I’ll lay. She’d the great heart. ” 

The great heart of the woman throbbing at his side 
opened its flood gates and a rush of crimson made 
glorious darkness of her face and throat. 

She bowed her head superbly to the inrushing tide. 
John Blunt, sitting abashed as a boy at her side, 
caught a glimpse of her dark and drooping beauty, as 
the passion tide retreated and left her pale as a lily. 


XLIX 


JOHN BLUNT AT THE HALL 

Once at the Hall he refused to go to bed, but lay on 
the lawn in that easy chair which had recently been 
filled by a white waistcoat. 

As he lay he could see the roofs of the village beneath 
him and afar on a hill the tall chimney of a pit. 

Something seemed to amuse him. 

Several times he chuckled, and once laughed aloud. 

Lady Florence heard him and came, smiling in 
sympathy. 

“Well, what is it?” she asked. 

He had made himself a coronet of silver paper and 
stuck it absurdly on his head. 

“Nothing,” he gurgled. “Only I love to bask before 
my castle door and look down on the hovels of my villeins. 
It makes me feel so superiah ! Ha, my deah fellah, where 
is my coronet? Send my valet to me and my groom of 
the chambah! Go down to my people and tell them to 
parade before me heah at sundown and I will administah 
justice to them. ” 

“Ass,” said Lady Florence, grinning. “Don’t mock 
at your betters and people you can’t understand. ” 

Toward evening, the horizon smouldering in the sun- 
set, he wandered slowly down to the ha-ha above the river. 

351 


352 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


There Lady Florence, with Mac at her heels, found him. 

‘‘It’s not bad up here,” he mused, looking out into 
the distance. 

“Some people think it’s rather beautiful,” said the 
lady, somewhat piqued. 

He turned to her abruptly. 

“How much d’you own? — how many acres?” 

She set her teeth and did not answer, knitting steadily. 

“D’you know,” he mused, “that there are a quarter of 
a million of people in Imperial England who struggle for 
one fourth share of one room apiece?” 

Her face was set, white and stubborn as a chalk cliff. 

She answered nothing; and her eyes flashed against 
her knitting needles. 

Then she drew in her lips. 

“I see you’re becoming quite yourself again, Mr. 
Blunt,” she shivered, and stamped away with down- 
ward eyes, Mac growling in sympathy, he didn’t know 
why. 

He saw her no more till she came down to dinner, in 
her austere and simple beauty of assumed widowhood. 

He was standing before the fireplace, slip-shod and 
shabby, in gray knickers and old slippers, looking, to 
do him justice, somewhat shamefaced. 

As she came toward him, cold and dark and beautiful, 
he cocked a dubious eye at her. 

“ I got no trousers,” he said. 

“It’s a lie,” retorted the other briskly. “I packed 
’em myself this morning — those gray ones with the filth 
spots all over them. Go and put ’em on at once. ” 


JOHN BLUNT AT THE HALL 353 

John Blunt slopped away, grinning rather fool- 
ishly. 

“The head flunkey should have laid ’em out on my 
bed,” he growled. “Things aren’t done as they should 
be in this house. No style. ” 

He was just gentleman enough to apologize before 
going to bed that evening. 

“I’m like that,” he muttered. “Perhaps I’ll change 
— if I pull this off. ” 

Her eyes swept his face as he stood before her, a 
great, baffled boy, gruff, sullen, and ashamed. 

“It’s all right,” she said calmly. 

Next day John Blunt, almost himself, stalked about 
the gardens all day. 

The autumn lady watched the bare-headed gray figure 
pacing, pacing up and down in secluded alleys and under 
great trees, a yellow mongrel limping at his heels. 

Roaming about, John Blunt found himself once in the 
stable yard. 

A little dapper groom in his vest sluiced the wheel 
of a dog cart. 

John Blunt watched him for a minute, and then took 
a coin from his pocket. 

“Here you are,” he said. 

“No, sir, thank you,” said the little man, touching 
his forehead, and breathing hard. 

“Come! don’t be a damn fool,” growled the other. 

The little groom smiled a white smile, and set the wheel 
spinning. 

“Swear, is it? swear?” he said; and standing back 


354 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


with his head rather on one side, crowed to the flashing 
wheel, “Who’dbea Sowcialist?” 

John Blunt retired moodily and rehearsed the incident 
for Lady Florence at tea that evening. 

She nodded approval, drawing in her lips. 

“If you stopped long enough in my house,” she said, 
“you’d soon learn what is expected of a gentleman.” 

“ I don’t see that calling me a Sowcialist helps 

much,” grumbled the other. 

Lady Florence set her teeth. 

“You want Rachel to you, my friend,” she said. 

He answered with that swift sincerity of his which en- 
deared him to her in spite of herself. 

“Ido.” 

After tea he strolled down the drive, the yellow mongrel 
escorting him. 

The pair passed out of the great gates on to the gray 
road. 

John Blunt was subdued as the autumn evening, beau- 
tiful about him. 

An old couple were driving slowly toward him in a 
gig. Directly they saw the yellow mongrel they began 
to gesticulate. 

“’Tis!” cried the old woman. 

“’Tisna, I tell thee!” shouted the old man, yet jobbed 
his reins, and drove apace. 

“’Tis!” screamed the old woman, and scrambling 
from the cart, bundled down the road, screaming, “ Gyp ! 
Gyp!” 

The yellow mongrel pricked his ears. For a moment 


JOHN BLUNT AT THE HALL 


355 


he crouched with quivering tail and whimpered, uncertain 
clearly what his reception was going to be. Then, 
suddenly sure, he was in her arms, smothering her with 
kisses, dabbing for her rough old chin, whining with 
delight. 

John Blunt watched them with kind eyes. 

The doubt, the dawning certainty, the avalanche of 
Love reconciling all things and making them One, moved 
him strangely. 

Here was an image of that eternal process of At-One- 
Ment that had been going on all round him everywhere 
throughout the world from the Beginning and would go 
on to the End. 

Certainly there was never a happier meeting in Heaven 
after a long parting than that of these three. 

He drew up in the ditch to let the gig by. The yellow 
mongrel sat ensconced between the old two who were all 
he knew of God, set high in heaven above him. They 
laughed and chuckled, their red faces wreathed in smiles, 
and toothless gums showing, as they looked down on the 
Prodigal Son returned to them at last. 

He sat between them, his eyes uplifted to theirs and 
loving. 

The old man seeing the big gray-bearded stranger 
at the roadside watching them thought their emotion 
needed explanation. 

“We lost him,” he shouted. “Been away a fortnight. 
A very valyable dog.” 

“Glad you found him,” called John Blunt after 
them. 

“Aye, we found him, aw reet,” answered the other. 


356 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


They rolled on up the hill into the sky. 

John Blunt turned thoughtfully home. 

He walked musing up the drive under beeches rustling 
in the dusk. 

Out there in the road he had seen a vision, summing 
up for him in concrete form his emotions of the moment, 
and stamping them indelibly upon his heart. 

In that little wayside scene of love and reconciliation 
Nature had spoken to him and made realities of certain 
dim ideas that had long floated shadow-wise in his 
mind. 

He had always been a good man, his mother’s son, 
turning the dross of his fierce passions into the pure gold 
of service through the alchemy of sacrifice. He had never 
wronged a woman or knowingly robbed a man. Only 
once in his life had he been drunk. And on the rare 
occasions when as a boy he had lied, he had lied straight- 
forwardly, brutally, and with a will. 

Yet was he too not in some sense a Prodigal Son? 

The thought haunted him this evening. 

Had he too not journeyed into a Far Country and 
wasted his substance in riotous living? Had there 
been no mighty famine in his land? Had he too not been 
in want? Was he too not coming to himself — after 
many years? 

He stood quite still in the dusk, his eyes set on one 
pale star that twinkled at him through leaves. 

That evening after dinner he sat very silent and 
subdued, his eyes on the window wide upon the starlit 
night. 


JOHN BLUNT AT THE HALL 


357 


“A penny for ’em,” said his hostess briskly at length. 
He answered grave as a boy, 

“Can you be a Prodigal Son without knowing it?” 
She looked at him amazed. 

Was John Blunt joining the sentimentalists? 

“I’m sure I don’t know,” she said flippantly. “Ask 
a parson. ” 


L 


RACHEL COMES HOME 

John Blunt sat at breakfast. 

A post-card was propped against the egg cup before 
him; his eyes were on it as he ate, and the light was com- 
ing and going in his face like waves. 

“Rachel’s coming to-day,” said the autumn lady 
quietly. 

He made no answer, munching deliberately. 

The lady looked out from behind the urn, saw the 
gleam in the other’s eyes, and dropped her gaze. 

“She doesn’t say her train.” 

“Six-forty,” he replied. 

Then a great quiet fell upon them both. 

After breakfast John Blunt went out into the garden 
alone. 

Very subdued, he wandered up and down stately garden 
walks, under great trees, where robins sang full-throated. 

The autumn lady watched him from the window. 

She seemed to reflect the quiet of her guest. There 
was something good, gentle, more than a thought wistful 
about her as she watched. It was a beautiful and mys- 
terious smile that came and went in her eyes as every 
now and then she caught a glimpse of gray shoulders and 
a shaggy head between trees across the lawns. 

358 


RACHEL COMES HOME 


359 


Once she rose and going to the window tapped tenderly. 

He was a hundred yards away and could not hear; nor 
did she expect or wish him to. 

Then she turned to the photograph of Rachel on an 
octagon table, and bent over it with a wistful smile. 

And as she resumed her writing there was about her 
face the pure and rain- washed beauty of women who have 
suffered and have prevailed. 

Her maid and housekeeper noted the change and 
commented on it. 

“It’s my belief!” said the housekeeper and nodded 
significantly to the bare-headed figure across the lawns. 

“Not him!” scoffed the maid. “She can’t abide him. 
Only she’s kind to him because he’s fallen down and 
scratched himself. She plaisters him. And when you 
plaister ’em, you must like ’em like.” 

“Ah,” said the housekeeper unconvinced. “He’s 
hairy. He’s like a wild man o’ the woods. That’s 
what he is. I know,” and she waddled out, nodding 
mysteriously. 

The autumn lady joined her guest before luncheon. 

“Well, Man,” she said gently. 

“Well, my lady.” 

“I’m going to send the ’bus to meet Rachel this 
evening.” 

“No; send the pony cart.” 

“I — am — going — to — send — the — ’ bus — to 
meet Lady Rachel this evening,” reiterated the other, 
precisely and emphatic. “It’ll start at six-ten and could 
call at the house if you wished it.” 


360 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“No,” he said, ‘Til walk.” 

“Very well then, walk and faint on the way, and 
be picked up and carried home like a baby,” snapped 
her ladyship. 

It was dark when the great train rumbled under the 
bridge, a glowing white mane along its back, and drew 
up at the station that evening. 

A laughing face, somewhat anxious, peered through the 
window, and a hand waved at the tall man standing 
beneath the lamp. 

“How’s the invalid?” she asked in a low chuckle, as 
she descended, her hand in his. 

“I’ll do,” he said awkwardly. “Where’s Kitty- 
your-son?” 

“Oh, I left her at Pentlands. She’s making my clo. 
Besides, I thought you didn’t approve of maids.” 

“Nor of footmen,” said John Blunt. “So I left what’s- 
his-name at the Hall, and came instead — on the box. 
The coachman’s a convinced Socialist, but I’m not to 
tell.” 

Deliberately he possessed himself of her wraps, her 
ticket, and herself, and led the way out. She followed 
meekly, her brown eyes brimming, and the dimples eddy- 
ing all about her lips. 

Outside in the darkness the lamps of the ’bus glared 
on the tossing horses. 

John Blunt shoved in the wraps and slammed the door. 

“Right!” he called, and the empty ’bus swung off into 
the night. 

“What about us?” asked Rachel. 


RACHEL COMES HOME 


361 


“We’ll walk up.” 

“What fun!” cried the girl. “Won’t Cousin Florence 
swear? She’s so fearfully prim and proper.” 

They walked up through the darkness. A few stars 
swam in mist; and a peewit cried. 

A slice of moon the colour of an orange glimmered at 
them through black branches as they took the road that 
ran dim between dark hedges. Beasts grazed noisily 
in the night beside them. The great star of a bicycle 
bore down swift and silent on them. At a bridle-lane a 
group of shepherds stood and talked, and a dog crossed 
the road and sniffed at them friendly. 

John Blunt did not speak, trudging sombrely at her 
side. Once or twice she gleamed up at him, welling 
laughter; and once their shoulders brushed. 

As they began to mount the hill toward the church, 
dark on its summit, his voice came out of the night, 
wonderfully soft. 

“Take my arm.” 

A hand like a mouse stole into his and trembled there. 

“Why did you go away like that?” came the voice out 
of the night, deep and low and very near. 

There was a tremble of tears in the voice that answered. 

“You see I thought it was just to be a dream — some- 
thing beautiful to have for always and always but only 
in the mind like poetry, d’you see? — not to be realized. 
You see I didn’t think you wanted me. I didn’t see how 
you could.” 

“I did, though,” said John Blunt, and pressed her 
arm against his side. 

A man passed them and a voice called, 


362 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“Good-night.” 

The little mouse hand withdrew, and he knew that she 
was crying. 

No further word came till they came to Wart cottage, 
a white blur in the darkness. 

“ Well, here you are,” gulped the girl humbly. “ Thank 
you for coming to meet me.” 

He trudged on. 

“I don’t lodge here now,” he said, gentle as herself. 

“Don’t you? Where then?” 

“With her.” 

“Who?” 

He paused a moment and then said: 

“Cousin Florence.” 

The girl broke into peals of laughter, flashing her 
tears away. 

“How did you manage that?” 

“I don’t know,” he said, and added; “she’s all right.” 

The autumn lady waited in the hall. 

There came the sound of feet on the steps, a stir in 
the porch, and Rachel entered. 

The girl and the woman rustled toward each other 
swiftly — the one who was lifting the beaker of life to 
her lips and the one from whose hand that beaker had 
been dashed. 

On the girl’s cheek still flashed a tear; and the woman’s 
eyes were beautiful with joy and suffering. 

The lips of both trembled as they met; and their eyes 
shone and swam and smiled in the subdued light. 

Neither spoke. . 


RACHEL COMES HOME 


363 


The two clasped and clung in a tumult of emotion. 

John Blunt stood behind, awed by the passion and 
poetry of the meeting between these two mute and 
splendid souls. 

Slowly the two women disentwined hearts, lips, and 
fingers, and turned rainy eyes upon him, abashed and 
baffled in the background. 

“Man,” sniffed the autumn lady. 


LI 


THE LAST OF THE AUTUMN LADY 

Half an hour later he stood in the darkness on the 
lawn before the house. 

The windows of the bedroom above him were open. 
On either side of a great looking-glass two candles shone 
like stars; and in the light of them two white arms 
wreathed and twined. 

John Blunt moved off the dewy lawn on to the gravel 
with downcast eyes. Standing beneath the open window 
he whistled softly the opening bars of the “Wedding 
March” in “Lohengrin.” 

A face peeped cautiously from behind a curtain; a 
blind came down with a rattle, and a mischievous voice 
from behind said: 

“Sucks!” 

John Blunt retired into the drawing room, flung himself 
into an arm-chair, and sat there, his eyes glued to the 
ceiling. 

Light feet pattered above. 

He put his hands to his mouth and sang out: 

“Ship ahoy!” 

The light feet began to dance, and John Blunt rose and 
danced with them. 

When Lady Florence entered she found a middle-aged 
364 


THE LAST OF THE AUTUMN LADY 365 

gray figure twirling with wide arms and floating coat tails 
and cracking his fingers as he twirled. 

'“My servants!” she said with the mild resignation 
which was now her characteristic note. 

The feet above ceased to patter and John Blunt floated 
down into a chair. 

“He’s raised a black coat at last, I see,” said Lady 
Florence, inspecting him. 

“I had to get it,” answered the other. “Martha made 
me. It was made in under a day.” 

“It looks it,” said her ladyship resignedly. “And a 
clean collar,” she went on, eyeing him impersonally. 
“He looks almost presentable.” 

Rachel stole into the room, her slim neck peeping 
from a silvery-shimmering shawl cast carelessly about 
her shoulders. 

“D’you talk of Mr. Blunt as Him always, Cousin 
Florence?” she asked mischievously. 

“Yes, my dear. He taught me. He always talks of 
me as She. He’s taught me a lot.” She took the girl’s 
arm. “Come on, Man!” she said. “It’s time to feed 
him.” 

All dinner Rachel chattered, and John Blunt harangued. 

Lady Florence sat in mild amaze and listened. Every 
now and then she said: 

“That Man!” 

Then Rachel would chuckle : “ Cousin Florence ! ” and 

the elder woman would say: “My dear!” and relapse 
again, while the chattering and haranguing would 
break forth afresh. 

When Rachel went to bed, he lit her candle for her. 


366 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“Now light Cousin Florence’s too,” she cooed, mock- 
motherly. “There’s a good li’l boy. He’ll soon learn, 
he will.” 

His eyes followed her as she trailed up the stairs, one 
hand hitching her dress, her brown eyes still teasing him. 

“ If it’s a fine morning I shall get up at dawn and ride 
down to the sand-hills in the dew, I shall,” she said. 
“ Cock-a-doodle-doo ! ” 

“All right,” he answered. “I’ll be there.” 

“Not wanted, t’ank you,” teased the girl, lifting a 
proud face. “I go my lone.” 

“Rubbish!” imterposed Lady Florence sharply. “I 
won’t have any such nonsense. Mr. Blunt, you ought 
to be ashamed of yourself, a man of your years en- 
couraging the child to misbehave.” 

“Cock-a-doodle-doo!” came the voice from down the 
passage. 

“It’s all her,” grinned John Blunt. 

“No, it isn’t,” said Lady Florence. “It’s all you. 
She used to behave all right before you came.” 

“All right. All right. All right,” grumbled John 
Blunt in his beard. “Shut it — for the Lord’s sake!” 

He shouldered away toward the smoking room. 

The girl leaned over the banister and gleamed down 
on him. 

“Sulky little Tiddy B’ar!” she mocked. 

It was seven o’clock. 

John Blunt was crossing the lawn toward the house 
at a slow trot, his hands deep in his pockets, and his 
feet making dark marks in the dew. 


THE LAST OF THE AUTUMN LADY 367 


He wore neither coat nor stockings. His blue shirt 
was open at the neck, and a towel was slung about his 
shoulders. 

A low whistle from the house made him look up. 

Rachel’s bedroom window was wide. At it stood the 
girl in light blue wrapper, smiling at him. 

John Blunt waved his towel. 

“I’ve just had my tub,” he called. 

“I’m just going to have mine,” came the young voice 
answering. 

A finger tapped sharply at a neighbouring bow-window. 

There stood the autumn lady stern and in dishabille. 

She flung up the window. 

“ Remember the gardeners ! ” she cried in deep bass voice. 

John Blunt cocked with his thumb toward Rachel. 

Lady Florence gesticulated fiercely. 

“Rachel! Rachel! are you insane?” 

The girl blew her a mocking kiss and disappeared. 

When she came down to breakfast. Lady Florence 
greeted her coldly. 

“You ought to know better,” she said, presenting an 
icy cheek to the girl’s lips. 

“It’s him, Cousin Florence,” said Rachel demurely. 
“He leads me on.” 

“Good on ye!” grinned John Blunt from the sideboard. 
“Go it.” 

“He doesn’t know any better,” said Lady Florence. 
“ You do.” 

By the end of breakfast she had forgiven them. 

“What is he going to do with you all day, my dear?” 
she asked with mild irony. 


388 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“He’s going to take her to Scale-garth,” said John 
Blunt, pacing the lawn, gray-headed. 

“Is he?” snorted Rachel, rather piqued at the other’s 
assumption of possession. 

John Blunt turned to her. 

“Well, isn’t he?” he asked meekly. 

Lady Florence made a noise that was half a grunt and 
half a squeal. 

The resistance in the girl’s face died away. She shone 
up at the man beside her. 

“Of course he is,” she said. 

Lady Florence retired into the house. 

“I’ll tell Mrs. Jerrold to put up some sandwiches for 
you young people,” she said and added — “He eats 
enormously.” 

Half an hour later she was standing on the steps, 
watching John Blunt’s gray head as he pumped up 
Rachel’s bicycle. The girl stood by putting on her 
gloves, a motor-scarf bound about her hat and tied 
beneath her chin. She wore her white blouse with broad 
sailor collar, and a forest green skirt. 

“This pump is rotten,” said John Blunt. 

“Bad workman,” retorted Rachel. “I’ll take the 
basket.” 

“No; Til take the basket.” 

“ Til take the basket.” 

“No; you take yourself. That’s plenty for you.” 

So they chattered, chaffed, and wrangled like the boy 
and girl they were. 

The autumn lady watched them resignedly, Mac pant- 
ing at her feet. 


THE LAST OF THE AUTUMN LADY 369 


Suddenly she held out her hand to the girl 
beneath her. 

“Good-bye, my dear,” she said. 

Rachel smiled mysteriously, and John Blunt grinned. 

“He’d better have a cape,” cried Lady Florence. 
“It’s going to rain.” 

“ No, I’m hanged if I do,” blustered John Blunt. “ I’m 
not made of butter.” 

Lady Florence disappeared into the hall, and came 
out, a cape in her hand. 

“Here, Man!” she said, and flung it about him 
motherly. “Take mine.” 

He let it rest. 

As they rode away the autumn lady stood on the steps 
and looked after them. 

Her eyes were kind and rather wistful. 

Then she retired into the great empty house, her 
dog borne baby-wise in her arms. 

















THE FILLING OF THE HOLLOW 



THE FILLING OF THE HOLLOW 


I 

It was a still morning, mild and dim. 

The sky was silver-mottled, the gray distance loud 
with rooks, as they glided through the village and over 
the bridge, the Wart gleaming mistily beneath them. 

“Pity it’s not clear,” said John Blunt, as they swept 
away toward the hills. 

“There are some peep-holes,” replied the girl, throwing 
up her head. “ I can see some little blue veins — oop da ! ” 

The telegraph posts drummed; the free wheels purred; 
a robin sang merrily in the stillness. 

“Are we going to have thunder?” cried the girl to a 
man dry- walling on the steep of a hill. 

“Nay; it’s nowt but t’hate,” he answered. 

The chestnuts showed prickly among tarnished leaves; 
the hedge was red with berries; and the apples shone like 
little suns in the orchards of the cottages. 

“Autumn, autumn,” murmured John Blunt — “ sea- 
son of mists and mellow fruitfulness .” 

“Autumn on Earth; Spring in Heaven — Spring in the 
heart ! ” cried the girl. “ Oh, if I was a poet! — the robins, 
the red berries, the rimy fields. . . . Whir-r-roo!” 

She shot down a hill with head bowed and fluttering 
sleeves. 


373 


374 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“How you scorch !” he said and passed her, his free 
wheel purring. 

F “Wait for me at the bottom !” she sang, bending her 
dark head against the wind. 

Lancaster Fell lay on their right, low and dim, a patch 
of grass white upon its summit. In a rough field peewits 
ran dark-crested among rushes and rose on silver-tipped 
wings, squealing querulously. 

A mottled hen squatted by the road side. 

“Nice, broody hen,” murmured the girl. “Don’t 
disturb her,” and she swung away to the other side of 
the road, he following faithfully. 

Some calves came to a gate, peered through the bars, 
and blew at them with dewy muzzles. 

“The roan one’s mine!” cried the girl. “He’s so 
tousled — like a sea. Which is yours?” 

“The red ’un,” replied John Blunt. “He’s like the 
good earth — deep and sound and solid.” 

“Cock-a-doodle-doo!” crowed the girl. 

“Diddle — diddle — diddle!” answered the gray 
man. 

He rode up alongside and stretched out his little finger, 
crooking it. 

She linked hers in it, her brown eyes smiling into his. 

“Hold tight!” he said, as they free-wheeled down a 
hill, locked so. 

“Tight and tight,” she answered, crooning to herself 
as they flowed along side by side. 

A bunchy old dame, in a sun bonnet, dipping for water 
in a trough at the road side, stood up as they passed her, 
the brass toes of her clogs shining in the sun. 


THE FILLING OF THE HOLLOW 375 

“He’s far ower old for thee, nm dear,” she shrilled as 
they swept by. 

The little white finger tightened its hold on the big 
brown one; and the girl rode on, crooning. 

So they swung swiftly along, fingers linked, the great 
hills closing in on them on every side. 

“Enough,” said the girl, seeking to disengage. 

“No.” 

“Enough,” sternly. 

He loosed her reluctantly. 

Now the dimness began to glow, and the brows of the 
fells glimmered a ghostly green. 

“I can see my shadow,” Rachel chanted. “I can feel 
the Sun behind — the Sun behind — the blessed Sun that 
reddens the apple and ripens the seed.” 

The girl held out both her arms to heaven as one about 
to receive a gift, and the light was holy on her face. 

From a wee pink cottage behind the hedge came the 
sound of a woman humming to herself. 

“Hush!” said Rachel, and rode reverently with bowed 
head listening. 

“A baby,” whispered John Blunt, “a baby, I’ll bet — 
soft, and round, and cuddlesome.” 

A splendid young peasant woman appeared above 
the hedge, a baby busy at the breast that gleamed like 
a full moon amid ragged clouds. 

She looked with great mild eyes at the passing couple. 

“Aye, thou’rt ripe for them,” she said softly. “And 
he’s ripe for thee.” 

The girl bent her head, and launched forward swiftly, 
as one who runs away. 


376 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


He pursued her, remorseless and slow. 

“You can’t escape,” he said grimly at her ear. 

She slowed down. The warm colour was in her cheek, 
and the soft light in her eyes. 

“Perhaps I don’t want to,” she answered, gleaming 
up at him. 

Now they rode beneath spindly oaks by the gates of 
Warton Hall. 

An immense buz-z-z of insect life rose from among the 
rhododendrons. 

She dismounted and listened. 

“It’s like the hum of the towns,” she murmured — 
“the great towns working out their destiny in darkness 
and turmoil and sin.” 

“We’ll help them,” murmured the man beside her — 
“you and I.” 

The girl’s eyes lighted. 

“Ah,” she said, “I want to. . . . It’s there our 

battle urges.” 

The road grew regular and more sandy. Lancaster 
Fell loomed before them always heightening as they drew 
toward it. 

“Oh, isn’t he a beauty?” cried the girl, her eyes lifted. 
“I do love him. He’s so rough. . . . Hark! Otter 

hounds in the Wart!” 

“Beasts!” grumbled John Blunt — “painting God’s 
earth vermilion . . . Hark to ’em! I believe they’ve 

found. Yooi — yooi — yooi! ” 

“Oh, you!” rippled the girl. 

They dropped down the hill, crossed the Wart, and 


THE FILLING OF THE HOLLOW 377 


climbed again to the village of Holmdale, Warton Fell 
squatting brown upon their left. 

A white cottage flamed crimson beneath creeper on 
the hill top before them. 

“ There !” panted the girl. “That’s what makes me 
love the autumn.” 

“Splendid!” said John Blunt deeply. “ Morituri 
te salutant .” 

“Sacrifice,” said the girl softly. “Yes, that’s it. 
Via Crucis. Behold in the Cross is all ; in dying to thyself 
is all; and there is no other way to life hut the way of the 
holy Cross and of daily dying. You remember Thomas 
a Kempis?” 

They dropped down into the dale, choked with mist 
that seemed to disappear before them only to gather 
again in front. 

The hills congregated in dim masses round the dale- 
head. Now the road ran between stone walls, cattle 
calling to each other over them, a boy yodling from the 
brow-foot, and a rampart of dark fell hemming them 
in on either side. 

Once a man passed them with a lean trail hound on a 
lead, and once a shepherd with a flock of red-dyed sheep 
and a wall-eyed dog. 

“Now we’re coming to the nice,” cried the girl. “It’s 
so wild and bare and strong. Heaven and Earth mixed 
— no in-between man to spoil it all. . . . Each bend 

of the road reveals something new and beautiful. There’s 
old Hoar Fell! Isn’t he dim?” 

In the sheltered dale the bracken was still green on the 
fell side. Here and there the bones of the hills had worn 


378 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


through their hides and showed gray and ghastly. In the 
hill side close to the road was a raw gash, the granite 
piled beneath it, where man had torn the heart out of 
the rock. 

“ Violence !” cried the girl and shuddered. 

“It’s only a scratch,” said the man. “It’ll heal in a 
century of centuries.” 

Here and there white farm or gray stood amid 
shabby brown sycamores at the fell-foot. A wall 
crawled precariously up the hill side caterpillar-like. 
The Holm ran noisily on their right between gray 
shingle banks. In the meadows beside it men still 
carried corn. 

A laden cart came creaking toward them, the old 
white horse in it almost lost to sight beneath golden 
sheaves. 

“What sort of a harvest?” cried John Blunt. 

“None so bad for the lateness of the season,” replied 
the man. 

“Ah,” said John Blunt, “better late than never.” 

The girl had spurted ahead. 

“Whoever gets to the bridge first — stop!” she sang. 

She sped along before him with fluttering white sleeves 
and little brown feet that played hide and seek beneath 
her skirt. Her head was bent to the wind, and the end 
of her scarf trailed out over her shoulder. 

He followed her leisurely with kind eyes that never 
left her back. 

She swept to the right up a rough lane, bounced over 
stones, dropped down a steep incline, and slid off on an 
old bridge under trees. 


THE FILLING OP THE HOLLOW 379 


She was leaning over the bridge, as he dismounted 
at her side. 

Her elbows rested on the stone; her slim young form 
clung to the parapet; and she gazed down as one 
enthralled. 

“Wonderful!” she murmured, and her whole body 
seemed to thrill. “Wonderful! Wonderful!” 

Beneath the bridge was a green pool brimming in a 
chalice of rock, deep-set, deep, deep. • The bottom of 
it was strewn with pebbles seen clearly as through glass, 
and the surface stirred faintly as though an angel breathed 
on it. Red-berried ash and yellowing birch overhung it, 
and the dead rocks between which it lived and moved 
were scattered over with autumn gold. For fifty yards 
the stream flowed thus in awed silence yet scarcely 
seemed to flow, so still it was, knowing neither ripple, 
eddy, or murmur; then broke into fresh babble amid gray 
stones, shingle banks, and shallows, and dashed away 
shouting merrily like a child let out of church. 

John Blunt gazed down into the brimming waters 
beneath him. 

“ Deep ! ” the girl murmured deeply. “ Oh, how deep ! ” 

“Deep as the Heart of God,” he answered. 

At the shallow end of the pool some trout waved slow 
tails, and a red squirrel hopped along the rocks by the 
water edge. 

There the Holm splashed and chattered over shallows, 
a birch shaking golden shekels down on its torn and 
foaming waters. 

Rachel still gazed into the green deeps as one 
enchanted. 


380 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“It’s like one of those still moments that come in the 
lives of us all — even of the shallowest, roughest, and 
rowdiest — to remind us what we are,” she said. 

“And what are we?” he asked. 

The words brimmed to the girl’s lips, and welled over 
tremulously. 

“Love, aren’t we?” she said. 

II 

They passed through an old farm yard, a gray-muzzled 
dog blinking beneath a cart, and a long-faced shepherd 
tending a maggot-eaten sheep, and began to climb the 
hill on to the High Fells. 

The road ran among rocky hillocks sprinkled with oak 
and larch. On their left among trees behind a wall 
was the sound of a water-fall. 

“Pity there’s no sun,” he said, plodding up the rough 
road, shoving the bicycles. 

“He’ll come,” replied the girl on a grassy knoll above 
him, beckoning with a finger. “He’ll come. Sweet! 
Sweet!” 

And come he did to her calling. 

The dimness began to gleam and glow about them as 
they passed through a gate on to the moor. 

John Blunt lifted his face to the growing light, and the 
girl both her arms like one praying. 

The moor opened now before them bare and heathery, 
patched here with bog myrtle, swelling there into a hill 
strewn with great gray rocks, and slipping again into a 
tiny stream-haunted valley. 


THE FILLING OF THE HOLLOW 


381 


The road flowed across the moor like a river. The sun 
shone mistily on rocks, bracken, and heather, and the 
man and woman walking side by side. 

“How late the heather is,” said the girl. “It looks as 
if the light came from it.” 

She took her bicycle afresh and mounted. 

Slowly they rode, he following her, the road rising and 
dipping before them. 

On their left lay the great hills shimmering in the sun- 
shine. Here and there at the foot of them a few green 
fields had been cut out of the Wilderness and walled about 
with stone, a lonely farm amidst stacks and sycamores 
watching over them. 

“I do like the way they peep at you over each other’s 
shoulders!” cried the girl. 

She named the mountains as she rode, and he contra- 
dicted her. 

“That’s Blaw-ness.” 

“No, that’s Hoar Fell Pike.” 

“That is Blaw-ness I say; and that’s Kirk Fell; and 
that’s the Pillar.” 

A long-legged postman came striding by, a gaunt figure 
in uniform seeming strangely out of place there in 
the wild. 

The girl appealed to him. 

“Aye. Yon’s Blaw-ness; and t’udder’s Kirk Fell; and 
that’n’s Old Man.” 

“There!” cried the girl. 

John Blunt mounted. 

“That’s what I said,” he replied. “We can ride a 
bit here.” 


382 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


They passed through a farm yard with sheep packed 
tight behind pens, a man busy among them, and an au- 
burn dog on watch; then out on to the naked moor again. 

Now they were high up in the heavens on a great 
windy platform. Westward, the way of the sea, the 
wind blew out of a jewelled sky across a dark waste of 
heather bowlder, and bracken, and flowed past them, to 
break against the tops of the far hills, splendid in the 
background. 

The girl opened her chest and breathed it in. 

Earth and sky; loneliness and splendour and strength; 
a hawk soaring in the blue above; one black-faced, long- 
tailed lamb baaing in a peat moss; grouse butts dotted 
here and there; and a black-cock bubbling unseen hard 
by the road. 

At a sign post rising spectre-like where the track split, 
the girl dismounted. 

“What about here?” 

They laid their bicycles against the post. 

She perched on a heathery mound, and he at her feet. 
A tiny stream deep in the heather tinkled beside them, 
and a low hill rose at their back. 

Then she. fed him, and he munched. 

Once a flood of sheep flowed down the road past them 
with rippling backs, a tall shepherd behind them, and 
a foxy dog fussing on their flanks. 

“It’s like Abraham and Isaac,” said the girl. 

Afterward he took the pewter mug, filled it at the 
stream, and brought it to her brimming. 

She drank with smiling eyes as he held it between his 
hands. 


THE FILLING OF THE HOLLOW 383 

“Your lips are wet,” he said. 

“Yours will be when you dwunk,” she grumbled in 
mock-bass voice. “Look what I got!” 

She flung an apple, red-cheeked and golden, in the air. 
Her face was lifted, and her throat gleamed, as she 
followed it with heavenward eyes. “Nice little red 
apple!” It fell with a splash in her strong young hand. 

“Gi’ me,” he said. 

“No. Want for little selfie.” 

“Gi’ me.” 

“Well, gi’ me back then. . . . Wait a sec. I’ll 

put my mark first.” 

She thrust her strong white teeth into the apple, mak- 
ing deep indents in the flesh of it, her eyes flashing 
laughter at him as she did so. 

“There!” she smiled. “Now.” 

“All slobbery,” he said, and wiped it in the heather. 

Then he took it in his two hands, hunched his shoulders, 
strained fiercely for a second, and split the apple in two, 
while she admired him. 

The seeds were discovered, embedded in shining gold. 

“Look!” he murmured. “The beautiful Future wait- 
ing for the touch of Earth and Spirit to spring into 
fresh life.” 

Daintily, delicately, smiling mysteriously, she picked 
out a perfect seed, and buried it in the earth. 

“There!” she murmured, “God bless ’oo. Be fruitful 
and multiply. Sleep a while to wake refreshed in the 
morning. -j will calI you . 

I will call you. 

In the Spring. ” 


384 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


“Perhaps it’s not ready,” said the man, a shadow 
above her. 

“Quite, quite ready,” replied the girl cosily; and her 
white fingers dabbed the dark earth over the buried seed. 
“Good-bye, my baby. Trust mother and father who 
love you.” She spread her young body on the ground 
and whispered with her lips close to the earth. “Does 
it seem dark, sweetheart? Ah, there is no death. It’s 
a cradle not a tomb. Have Faith. Have Faith. And 
down there in the darkness sleep and dream of the 
glorious Resurrection.” 

She laid her hand upon the spot, and kneeling chanted 
deep and solemn: 

“Unto the Earth, 

The darkness warm and deep. 

That cradles thee, I do commend thy sleep. 

Unto the Earth, 

Until the day shall break, 

And I shall come again mine own to wake — 

Unto the Earth.” 

She rose misty-smiling. 

“Now you wash plates while I find white heather,” 
she said. 

“All right,” he answered. “I do your dirty work 
and afterward I climb little hill behind and see De 
Voques Water from it. And you find white heather — 
if you can.” 

“Always can,” she said, and strolled off. “Luck gone 
if couldn’t.” 

The plates washed in the gurgling stream, he climbed 
the little round hill behind him and looked down on De 
Voques Water shining amid peat mosses at the foot. 


THE FILLING OF THE HOLLOW 385 

Across the water a white blouse wandered in the 
heather. 

He dropped down to it; and climbing again, the grouse 
calling about him, lost the white blouse for awhile. 

Then topping a rise he saw it in a dip of the moor 
just beneath him. 

The girl was sitting on the bank of a deep streamlet 
that forced its hidden way through the heather, peeping 
here, hiding there, gurgling, gleaming, playing hide and 
seek with the sky above it. 

In her belt was a bunch of red heather, and by her 
side her shoes and stockings. 

She sat in her white blouse with its broad collar and 
dabbled her feet in the stream, chuckling to the chuckle 
of the water. 

His shadow fell upon her. 

“There!” she cried triumphantly, and waved a sprig 
of white heather. 

Her eyes, brown and shining as the peat stream, 
sought his. 

She lifted her feet from the water and placed them 
dripping on a stone. 

Then he knew she trusted him. 

He strode across the stream and knelt down in the 
fragrant bog myrtle opposite her. 

Making a bowl of both his hands, he dipped them in 
the stream, and poured the water over her bare feet; 
and dipped again and poured. 

Then he looked up at her. 

He was breathing deep and calm, and a gracious light 
was coming and going in his face. 


386 


TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 


Now he bent and kissed her shining foot. 

She was looking at him with dark and dewy eyes, 
radiantly tender. 

The stream flowed between them, singing merrily. 

He placed his hands on hers, drew her gently to him, and 
kissed her on the lips. 

Each thrilled to the other. 

“Dear,” she whispered, and two great healing tears 
splashed down upon his heart. 


THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 









* 0 


V*. * > I ' 


% ° ^ <-• /if 

"4 *■ A. * 2 % v% x 

* A •„ W 


>■ „0 o ar 4.’ t .‘*WV'"* -0- c- 1 

/'.'•-A' ”••’ ,/ o- »A 


A" 


% 

V 

% 

- as » 

A v 



C> 

-1 


ss\'\ . „ ^ y o , V * ^0 




\V o ^ ' 11 k ^ 


<V* , 0 N f ' « <4> 

C- * ,^ ( . > 'P 

t> 


A' * v ‘ n * ”o ry 1 

v* ^ o° 1 

-A <# ~ ' ■■ * % 1 

% v* ~ - ■',_ 0 \ 

= a 5 A rl 



^ ^ _* AA 

, \VJU . <D \£ - 

sA* V 1 ■•%. 

k * < 6 .o«», v. 

r*0 A ^rvTx^ ^ J ^-j t *^° 

.A \ N 

v o * i ^ 'r'/ v* *“■ h/z/ y^ - r j -y v 0 

A “ * * A > ♦ o o' 

* *0 g> * LJ * A - 

<\ ^ » j 



,V'"’/ 


e A - * ^ 

A- > \V ^ * -v /y/sr v 

A.. -°a ♦,;>*/• a i°° 

*v.A c i v a:*a 


. 9 * A '* 6 j 

- A- /M. A. A* ; ^ 1 

$ %. - wriS' •* .a % 




'^r. ' 0 * «. * jl 

\ °o o° a 

W//y^ * - i 

- ^ °1 



'~C'1S'S x ' J ^ c\- / NX S>^~' -fir O,. * 

x>-_ »!•.»..% *-'* ./ s V v , A. * ’ ~ 0 ’ v'*\ ' * ° - 

% " M®. - ^ ^ .T ^Bj/% s 



^ ° S ^ * 

" ^ A ' ''"WvV 3 J ^ (A ^ - 

'>' ' ‘ ’ '“I/ ’ " # ’v< - • , * ‘ ' '*'o/ '' 

>v.aX' ;; ' ;>T o - <■ ’ %^y. .w., -o. 



A, ^ . <« ^ c 




fa 


-y 




fa*«, ^V 3 N 0 V'~ 

* ■ A . *. * * **- A 


■fa Ofa * 

^ ^V * , W - M „„ w , o w * 

#fafa 

u v \ .\y < *t t S rY O 

* •; ' fa cp v tt c fa c ♦;% * ^ fa N x • ' * , % 

r x, . v ^ fc'ni y., fafa $ 



W 


o> ^ ^ 

fa ^ * * VJ' 

-M^° % / fa 

/ ** %vfa 

s ’ fa 


& <t 

fa w ° * ^ 

•* fa c Q * 

o o v . _ 

-• -H ^ >** 

c b ■, ->»»• .' J 1 * ■%. ** 

^ * '. u <A fa fa * 


A >* 



Ca> ^ m 

, V'«’VA fa ^ V 

fa. 7 o * .!> * fa* 

fa. -O'- c 0 • 0 * 

o o » 7 ^ 

0 ~ ^ 

o o x ® <V, 

L* fa >• ^ 

A/ * 

<>*- ^ 



V // 'fa S s \ X . "fa 7 0 P k 

fa fa fa 1 * * fa. -0 

* ' fa <fa fafafa ° . A s * 

^ X°^- 

• o 0 c- x 

^ * * r 4 fa * 3 N 0 ’ v v fa* 

fa ^ ^ fa 

</» <^v aa ^\,\ -Z^////) ^ V S 



^ W 


<<, .c,- 

A- <A 



r 'p. .'is 


+ V , 

,0 o. 

’ xy A ✓ 

^ o c> 
w & * h - ~ N , 0 fc 

^-v 9 I A Ni. . Q v T 

v/ ^ ’ " " /• > » 0 ‘ s ^ ^ o. 

as <V*‘ 


V* " "* «SS s* -A O’ 

v A o, / o „ k ^ ,o v 

fa ' 8 « fa. fa C° N 

1 *° 0 X -f : .'., 





v**» #, v ^\,..,V*fa 0 < 

o 


A ,^ v 


d 

c > 


fa V ° 

<>< ' S ' \ V <. vl6 ^ fa 7 0 * X . 0 N C -r . 

jV *\r/? 22 ** -fa C'°’ ■» t ^^ V ^ 

4J N o&at/s <f> << 




♦ ** -■ n 5 'in 



0 H 0 ' fa 

v N * Y * 0 /■ 

* '<:' <y> /i„ r •>*■. 


* '' O' A » •, no’ 

o'- A-, A 

■ ' A. x 















